Labour’s attempt to play the class card against David Cameron is undermined by its failure to bridge the inequality gap. Both parties should focus on policies
Class warfare has dominated our airwaves for several months now. The pundits and more sensational papers are already squaring up for a prolonged squabble, delighted at the chance to sneer at Harriet Harman’s schooling and elite connections or to rehearse yet again the fascinating details of David Cameron’s Old Etonian background and cosy Notting Hill political world.
After years of apparent political consensus on everything from the markets to public services, it appears that some genuinely sharp differences are emerging. And with the Hills report published this week, showing that the gap between richest and poorest is now wider than it was decades ago, the need for action is urgent. So which party is best placed to address the class question?
It is not hard to see why Gordon Brown is tempted to play the crude identity card against Cameron, despite some fuming on his own side. In this post-deferential age, being an undiluted member of the upper class is considered a real handicap, even as voters envy the privileges and admire the confidence that it brings.
Cameron is the first potentially successful Tory leader for generations to have such a gilded start in life. He stands in stark contrast to former prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, whose own backgrounds and achievements seemed to embody the virtues and rewards of a meritocracy.
Polls this week show that a third of voters now identify the Tories as the party of the upper class, a blow to Cameron, who has worked so hard to emphasise the importance of warmth not wealth. Ironically, Cameron's patrician efforts to talk about poverty and how ‘we're all in this together’ come just as the nation reveals itself less prepared to take measures to benefit all.
According to the latest British Social Attitudes survey, only 39% of us now think that government should increase taxes to fund better public services, compared with 50% in 1990. And with most of the new Conservative intake keen to slash the welfare budget, there is little that suggests Cameron will find a swell of backbench support for his brand of caring One Nation Toryism.
Labour’s current problem is less about its leader’s origins than deep uncertainty over what – or who – it represents and what it has failed to achieve after three terms in government. Despite tax credits, the minimum wage and money poured into public services, inequality has grown under Labour’s watch, a fact that the damning Hills report only confirms. Add to this the figures released this week that show a sharp rise in the number of children living in severe poverty and it’s hard for ministers to claim any substantive success in battling inequality.
Even so, Deputy Prime Minister Harriet Harman has unequivocally stated that socioeconomic class will be the defining issue between the parties. Now hardly looks like the right time, then, to let it be known that the 50p tax rate on higher earners, a popular measure when it was introduced, will be temporary.
Harman at least seems to have a clearer idea of the party’s direction than her leader. Already this month, we have had a Brown speech appealing to the core vote followed hastily – after promptings from Business Secretary Lord Mandelson among others – by a Fabian lecture in praise of social mobility, with Brown talking of aspiration in terms of people’s dreams of ‘owning a bigger house, taking a holiday abroad, buying a new car’.
It took Ed Miliband, a possible future Labour leader, to step aside from these stale categories when he talked earlier this month of the need to stress self- interest and shared interest. Labour, he said, should build on common values rather than make a lame last-minute appeal to the presumed self-interest of this or that demographic.
So who is winning the class war? The Tories have a real leadership credibility problem, at least in the eyes of the public, and few clear cut policies to tackle the poverty they appear to deplore so much.
Labour’s difficulty is that, after 13 years in office, endless initiatives and laws, speeches and spin, new promises on tackling poverty are bound to ring hollow. Many will agree with Liberal Democrat David Laws that it looks like the government has ‘run out of ideas’.
Frankly, not much is likely to change for either party before May.
Melissa Benn is a writer and journalist
