The Squeezed Middle

They are still at it.

They are still talking about the brother who lost, in the way that Simon Cowell always paid more attention to Gareth Gates than to Will Young. They are still defining as "the centre ground" the demented attempt to re-stimulate the economy by putting yet more people out of work and by withdrawing yet more spending power, a scheme any deviation from which is termed "a lurch to the Left".

They are still calling the rich "Middle England" and "the middle classes"; Ed Balls told Jon Sopel that "the middle income is thirty thousand pounds", which should at least guarantee that he remains Shadow Education Secretary, at which he is good, rather than being moved to Shadow Chancellor, at which he would clearly be hopeless.

And they are still presenting trade union members as creatures from outer space, with those nurses and care workers, dustmen and bus drivers whose only political activity is the payment of the levy depicted as somehow less normal than the quite abnormal people, and I know of which I speak, whose hobby is local politics, or even than MPs, who have a thoroughly abnormal manner of life. David Aaronovitch told Andrew Marr that Britain should adopt something like American primaries. He had a point. But at present, the affiliated organisations section of Labour's Electoral College is by far the nearest thing to that. Ed, not David, Miliband won it.

The Squeezed Middle? We certainly are.