Stuart Smith

Labour conference will be suffused with the imagery of class politics. Most of the speeches will refer to “working people”, and imply that the party represents the poor and middle-income majority against the rich. It has been untrue for years. This year, it is less true than ever. Labour voters are richer, better-educated and more middle-class than Conservative and Reform supporters. Peter Kellner, the polling guru, reports a new survey from Norstat. The company interviewed 5,500 people after the 2024 election, and then again this month. The results show that 57% of Labour supporters were middle class (social grades ABC1) two years ago, which has now risen to 63%. The proportions of graduates and of those earning more than £40,000 a year have also risen sharply. The study confirms that the Great Class Inversion in British politics, after the Brexit vote 10 years ago, was no temporary blip but a long-run trend that is still happening. All the pollsters consistently report now that Labour voters are the most middle class, Reform voters the most working class (social grades C2DE), and the Conservatives somewhere in between, leaning towards the working class. Greens and Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, tend to be middle class, but not as much as Labour supporters. This is going to make Labour’s annual conference one long exercise in cognitive dissonance. When Andy Burnham promises breathing space on the cost of living, he is offering respite to people who do not intend to vote for him, on the whole. Labour supporters tend to be the ones who can afford the rent or the mortgage. When delegate after delegate comes to the lectern to talk about the class struggle, they will be talking about someone else’s class, most of whose members think that Labour does not represent them. If they urge solidarity with the workers, they may mean public sector workers in secure jobs with good pensions rather than the low-paid who feel more of an affinity with Nigel Farage. The Labour movement has always had middle-class leaders, and it has long been an alliance between intellectuals and organised labour, but this is something different. This is now a party of well-off graduates, with a tiny outhouse of the genuinely disadvantaged attached at the back. The class inversion has unexpected implications. It may explain why Labour members and supporters are more concerned about issues such as Gaza rather than immigration, which is what bothers the working class. Perhaps it is why Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer misjudged the pensioners’ winter fuel payment – if most pensioners they know give it to Greenpeace or spend it on wine. It makes Burnham’s northern working-class appeal seem like a form of historical re-enactment. When he talks about “reindustrialisation” or reversing 40 years of Thatcherism, this feels like an attempt to identify with a mythical working-class past idealised by many middle-class people with working-class origins. It may reflect the tendency of people who are objectively middle class to describe themselves as working class. The self-described working class has expanded since 1948, while the number of people in actual working-class jobs has declined. Equally, however, Burnham’s provincial working-class ham act could be the key to the electoral coalition that Labour needs. The other important finding of Norstat’s research highlighted by Kellner is that since the last election, Labour has lost more votes to the right – to Reform and the Tories – than to the left, to the Greens and the Lib Dems. This could mean that Burnham’s working-class pitch is exactly what Labour needs to win back those voters who have defected from the party of the middle class to one of the working-class parties. Especially as the battleground for the next election will overwhelmingly be seats fought between Labour on one side and either the Tories or Reform. There are not many Labour-Green or Labour-Lib Dem marginals. In Liverpool, expect a lot of middle-class people play-acting as working class. independent.co.uk/voices/lab…