On and on the toffs and the faux-proles blather that Labour has abandoned the working class. The whole thing is a good
10 years out of date.
Miliband was made Leader by the votes of trade union members. Working-class areas are about to return Labour MPs more solidly than at any time in the past, and far more solidly than in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Today's Labour front bench is the most socially diverse ever, the first politically mature fruits of the glorious harvest of comprehensive schools.
Gone are the days when military and union discipline lined up ranks of old miners and railwaymen behind an officer class of Hampstead public schoolboys at the front. (Not, it must be said, to denigrate the achievements of that system in its day.)
Consider the British economy and society of the 1970s, and then consider that in 1979, three out of five Labour MPs had never done manual or even clerical work in their lives. Ever. Not even during the War or during National Service. Even in their teens, they had been recognised as not the type.
Just check the educational backgrounds of the present Shadow Cabinet against those of the Cabinets of Clement Attlee, or even Harold Wilson. Compare and contrast the present Labour front bench with the outgoing, heavily public school Cabinet of broadly the same vintage. The comparison is obvious and the contrast is stark. It is the comps that are the better schools. It is very high time to stop apologising for them.
Just wait for the results across the working-class areas of London, or of the North, or of the Midlands. Then compare them with the same seats 40, 50, 60 years ago. The working class in those days was 45 per cent Tory. It certainly isn't now.
But then, Labour is the last patriotic party in British politics. It is funded by the tiny voluntary donations of millions of working British taxpayers, collected through their trade unions, which in the form that they exist in Britain are among the most quintessentially British of institutions, like the NHS or the Co-op.
Labour is not funded by people who, if they are British at all, are constantly threatening to leave their country if they did not get their own way, but were instead compelled to pay their taxes, or to pay decent wages to working British taxpayers such as those whose tiny voluntary donations funded the Labour Party.
Miliband was made Leader by the votes of trade union members. Working-class areas are about to return Labour MPs more solidly than at any time in the past, and far more solidly than in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Today's Labour front bench is the most socially diverse ever, the first politically mature fruits of the glorious harvest of comprehensive schools.
Gone are the days when military and union discipline lined up ranks of old miners and railwaymen behind an officer class of Hampstead public schoolboys at the front. (Not, it must be said, to denigrate the achievements of that system in its day.)
Consider the British economy and society of the 1970s, and then consider that in 1979, three out of five Labour MPs had never done manual or even clerical work in their lives. Ever. Not even during the War or during National Service. Even in their teens, they had been recognised as not the type.
Just check the educational backgrounds of the present Shadow Cabinet against those of the Cabinets of Clement Attlee, or even Harold Wilson. Compare and contrast the present Labour front bench with the outgoing, heavily public school Cabinet of broadly the same vintage. The comparison is obvious and the contrast is stark. It is the comps that are the better schools. It is very high time to stop apologising for them.
Just wait for the results across the working-class areas of London, or of the North, or of the Midlands. Then compare them with the same seats 40, 50, 60 years ago. The working class in those days was 45 per cent Tory. It certainly isn't now.
But then, Labour is the last patriotic party in British politics. It is funded by the tiny voluntary donations of millions of working British taxpayers, collected through their trade unions, which in the form that they exist in Britain are among the most quintessentially British of institutions, like the NHS or the Co-op.
Labour is not funded by people who, if they are British at all, are constantly threatening to leave their country if they did not get their own way, but were instead compelled to pay their taxes, or to pay decent wages to working British taxpayers such as those whose tiny voluntary donations funded the Labour Party.
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