Beat This

In the charming little booklet of essays sent out to Fabian Society members as part of the package relating to the Labour Party Deputy Leadership Election, Jon Cruddas writes:

"Manual labourers still account for a relatively stable 10.5 million workers - approaching forty per cent of total employment. If you were to add in clerical and secretarial work, then the traditional labour force stands at some 15 million - approaching two in three jobs. Where are the growth areas in the economy? There has been a slight rise in computer managers, software engineers and programmers, but the real increase has been in the long-established services of sales assistants, data input clerks, store keepers, receptionists, security guards and the like.

Alongside this has been a massive expansion in cleaning and support workers in the public sector, and increased work among the caring occupations - for example, care assistants, welfare and community workers, and nursery nurses. In short, throughout the last fifteen years, there has been no revolution in the demand for labour; rather, the key growth areas have been in traditional, often low-paid jobs, many of which are carried out by women."

Quite. But sooner or later Cruddas and others will have to realise that this simple recognition of fact is now incompatible with continuing membership of any of the three parties, run as they now are by and for people whose houses are cleaned while they are at work, whose offices are cleaned while they are at home, and who probably (if they think about it at all) think that these places simply clean themselves. Among many, many, many other examples of just how out of touch our governing class now is.

We need entirely new, bottom-up parties. One of which could do a whole lot worse than being led by Jon Cruddas.