The British class war

Tony Blair once claimed that the old Establishment was being replaced by the meritocratic middle class. The response from his audience was not wholly positive. A row ensued about who was middle-class and whether it should be trumpeted by a Labour leader as a badge of pride and progress.

The incident reminded me that the middle class is a very strange thing in Britain. Over the past half-century, while the ranks of the salariat have dramatically risen, the proportion of people identifying themselves as middle-class has actually fallen. As Ana Stamenkovic's boss demonstrated, to some the very idea of being middle-class is suspect.

While we associate the working class with virtues like honesty, hard work and community spirit, the middle class divides into two tribes who dislike and distrust each other. The Islington Tendency are the infamous chattering classes, self-obsessed and silly, parading their Leftish values while living in luxury and sending their children to private schools. The Blairs - as former residents of N1 - are still parodied as belonging to this group. What we might call the Surbiton Tendency as personified by Hyacinth Bucket or Jerry and Margot from The Good Life, leaning over the drinks cabinet to peep suspiciously through the lace curtains at their neighbours' new lawn mower. They are old fashioned, uptight, narrowminded, and - let's face it - deadly dull. Tony Blair's mistake was to tell the rest of us we were joining a class we don't really like very much.

But maybe it's time to provide a more accurate and commendable image of my own class. Yep, I'm grown up - I can take the slights: I'm middle-class. What's good about the middle classes? I'd start with the evidence that on most issues the middle classes are more liberal, more tolerant and more willing to accept change than the people on the council estate or in the manor. When ministers attack "yobsî, bogus asylum seekers and scroungers, it is their heartland vote - the old working class - and not middle England they are trying to appeal to.

In the US, "middle-classî is counted a term of honour. From roadsweepers to managing director, nine out of 10 Americans call themselves middleclass. Why are we different? It is partly those core English values: snobbery and its equally powerful sibling, inverted snobbery. Somehow the notion of the middle class carries with it the idea of caring about your social status and trying a little bit too hard to get on in the world. We suspect the middle classes of self satisfaction and would rather be "prolierî than "holier than thouî.

But yet while we sneer, most of us - and particularly the least well-off - do aspire to become ever more middleclass. That's why record numbers are staying on at school and attending universities. The things the middle classes do more - from supporting the arts to community volunteering - are generally good for society. Government ministers are about to lead a campaign to persuade people to become plumbers and electricians. No one wants to take on these working-class jobs, even when they come with incomes that make teachers or librarians green with envy.

But perhaps we middle classes should share some of the blame. We are ridiculously insecure about our position and far too protective. The British middle classes are world-class worriers. We send our children to private schools, spare them the trauma of travelling on public transport, and make sure they only socialise with their peers, when all the evidence shows that if you are born middle-class, you will, most likely die middle-class. As that resolutely middleclass north Londoner Karl Marx didn't say: "Middle classes of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your inferiority complexes.î

Matthew Taylor is director of the Institute for Public Policy Research