Emmeline wrote:Does the working class still exist in those numbers or are those missing voters now predominantly middle class?

Why does it even matter? Talking about a "vanishing working class" is a pernicious attempt to sideline socialist values. The fact that some heavy industries, and their labour-supporting workforces, have declined is irrelevant. The left will always have important things to say about inequality. Labour was a party formed to fight injustice and that never goes out of fashion.

The left have all the momentum of the truth behind them if they would only learn how to use. The tories are fundamentally, blatantly, objectively wrong. Inequality is bad for everyone, even the rich. As a long-term economic plan, creating a home-grown "Chinese" style workforce is as barmy as it gets. There's no future in a UK of starving paups abandoned and ignored by the City and their PR team, the tory party.

It's labour's job to remind people that everyone is equal, that there is such a thing as society, and that we can't have individual success except as part of a healthy, high-functioning society - including a generous spend on health, education, research, infrastructure etc which will pay us all back in spades.

mcgruff wrote:

Emmeline wrote:Does the working class still exist in those numbers or are those missing voters now predominantly middle class?

Why does it even matter? Talking about a "vanishing working class" is a pernicious attempt to sideline socialist values. The fact that some heavy industries, and their labour-supporting workforces, have declined is irrelevant. The left will always have important things to say about inequality. Labour was a party formed to fight injustice and that never goes out of fashion.

The left have all the momentum of the truth behind them if they would only learn how to use. The tories are fundamentally, blatantly, objectively wrong. Inequality is bad for everyone, even the rich. As a long-term economic plan, creating a home-grown "Chinese" style workforce is as barmy as it gets. There's no future in a UK of starving paups abandoned and ignored by the City and their PR team, the tory party.

It's labour's job to remind people that everyone is equal, that there is such a thing as society, and that we can't have individual success except as part of a healthy, high-functioning society - including a generous spend on health, education, research, infrastructure etc which will pay us all back in spades.

Very good. In fact, many middle class people are tearing their hair out, as their kids can't buy a house, can't afford rents in some areas, and they also view the wreckage done to the NHS with alarm. It would be absurd to construct some pseudo-proletarian image of Labour, whippets and flat-caps!

The economic crash, followed by the austerity policies of the Tories, have probably caused a lot of fear in both middle-class and working-class people, but I think it is possible to make a critique of austerity (and in fact, neo-liberalism as a whole), and point to Keynesian policies as a way forward. Corbyn in fact strikes me as a moderate Keynesian. Shock, horror.

I think the three basic class labels ('working', 'middle' and 'upper') should be scrapped along with their association with 'privilege' or lack of 'privilege' - a peculiarly British concept.
Perhaps we should be using more descriptive terms:
Idlers - who insist on contributing nothing to society but demand money from the public purse.
Non-Earners - who want to become 'Earners' but are prevented by illness, disability or no jobs available.
Earners - who carry out work and receive payment (regardless of position in society or type of job).
Fiddlers - who manipulate the financial system at the expense of Earners (and Non-Earners) thus diverting money on which they should be taxed.

Alan B wrote:I think the three basic class labels ('working', 'middle' and 'upper') should be scrapped along with their association with 'privilege' or lack of 'privilege' - a peculiarly British concept.
Perhaps we should be using more descriptive terms:
Idlers - who insist on contributing nothing to society but demand money from the public purse.
Non-Earners - who want to become 'Earners' but are prevented by illness, disability or no jobs available.
Earners - who carry out work and receive payment (regardless of position in society or type of job).
Fiddlers - who manipulate the financial system at the expense of Earners (and Non-Earners) thus diverting money on which they should be taxed.

While agreeing with you you are asking the impossible.

Yeah. Just a thought, though.

Re: the working class vote since 1997

Looking at the demographics of the 2015 election:

AB = 44% Cons, 28% Lab, 10% UKIP, 9% LD, 4% Green
C1 = 38% Cons, 30% Lab, 11% UKIP, 9% LD, 5% Green
C2 = 36% Cons, 31% Lab, 17% UKIP, 6% LD, 3% Green
DE = 29% Cons, 37% Lab, 18% UKIP, 6% LD, 3% Green
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blogs ... ally-voted

Looking at the 1997 demographics (Ipsos MORI):

AB = 41% Cons, 31% Lab, 22% LD, 6% other
C1 = 37% Cons, 37% Lab, 18% LD, 8% other
C2 = 27% Cons, 50% Lab, 16% LD, 7% other
DE = 21% Cons, 59% Lab, 13% LD, 7% other

The social gradings they use appear to be the standard ones used in the UK:

A upper middle class Higher managerial, administrative or professional
B middle class Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1 lower middle class Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2 skilled working class Skilled manual workers
D working class Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers
E non working Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners, and others who depend on the welfare state for their income

The grades are often grouped into ABC1 and C2DE; these are taken to equate to middle class and working class, respectively. Only around 2% of the UK population is identified as upper class, and this group is not included in the classification scheme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade

When Corbyn and other politicians/commentators refer to the working class in terms of number of votes, I assume they are using the above classification otherwise they wouldn't know where the votes had come from.

Alan B wrote:Yeah. Just a thought, though.

My wife was a member up to September of the British Women's Club. It has existed here since the 1930's.

It was quite amazing to see the British class structure still very present amongst the British women. My wife is Irish.

What's that saying? 'I think it's in the British DNA...'

Really helpful data Emmeline. Its terms of percentages, it really dos look like a huge chunk of Labours vote disappeared to UKIP and in the case of DE - some of went to the Tories as well.

Alan B wrote:What's that saying? 'I think it's in the British DNA...'

It seams like it.

Sendraks wrote:Really helpful data Emmeline. Its terms of percentages, it really dos look like a huge chunk of Labours vote disappeared to UKIP and in the case of DE - some of went to the Tories as well.

Not many switched from tory to ukip.

This is how those social grades span out across the population:

A Higher managerial, administrative and professional 4%
B Intermediate managerial, administrative and professional 23%
C1 Supervisory, clerical and junior managerial, administrative and professional 27%
C2 Skilled manual workers 22%
D Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers 16%
E State pensioners, casual and lowest grade workers, unemployed with state benefits only 9%
http://www.nrs.co.uk/nrs-print/lifestyl ... ial-grade/

and this is the voting turnout for the groups at the 2015 election:

AB = 75%
C1 = 69%
C2 = 62%
DE = 57%
(Ipsos MORI)

Alan B wrote:Idlers - who insist on contributing nothing to society but demand money from the public purse.

If they are members of the public, isn't it their "public purse" too? That's a very dangerous line of thinking to go down.

If we're going to talk about unearned income, then you have to include all forms of unearned income: inheritance, rising property prices, inflated salaries, over-charging and all forms of rent-seeking behaviour which exploit some kind of power or privileged access to resources. Someone has to work to create this wealth - someone other than the recipient.

Benefits fraud barely merits the attention of a junior minister.

Cameron, hasn't intervened in this matter and has not taken any action on the prison systems bid.
http://leftfootforward.org/2015/10/stan ... udi-child/

Sendraks wrote:

GrahamH wrote:He seems to have quite forgotten who got the country into the mess of 2008, or at least failed to save us, was not "working families" or "Hard left" policies. To the extent it was a UK issue, wasn't it regurgitation of Thatcherite policies, housing bubbles and financial deregulation?

I think its a real challenge for some Labour supporters to confront Blair for what he was, simply because he was so successful. Its hard to look at the past and try to be critical of the period 1997-2010 and say "we don't want to be like that" in a public facing way. But, if you're not prepared to do that, then the Tories can and will throw back in Corbyn's face every time he challenges them on a policy that actually is just a continuation of what Labour did in 1997-2010.

Very difficult to say "I think the Blair Government was wrong" without alienating a load of supporters.

For me it's pretty simple. I happily supported Blair (until Iraq), wasn't bothered about him not being left enough and was glad of whatever approach was necesary to keep the tories out. However there are clear reasons why continuity Blair is not the solution to today's problems.

For one thing, Blair's closeness to the city and business interests, while appearing as some magical third way to build a fair enabling state while still being "intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich" was actually nothing of the sort. What it was was a way of diverting all the expense of building a fair and enabling state into THE GODDAM MOTHERFUCKING SUPER-PLANETARY MOTHER OF ALL FINANCIAL BUBBLES. That didn't just put Labour out of power for at least two terms; it also destroyed (for me, unless someone can show me why I should believe otherwise) the supposed unity of super-rich and wider social interests on which it was built.

This is why, to me, the media rhetoric during the leadership campaign (not to mention Scot's deaf little soundbites) was completely arse-backwards. It's not Corbyn who's living in the past and refusing to acknowledge the present; it was the other three who seemed to think we could just pretend that the financial crash never happened and carry on with the same illusion that caused it (that we could somehow deliver a society based on Labour values while not causing any offence whatsoever to tory ones).

For another thing, global warming makes a mockery of the idea that we can forever put off arguments about how the pie is to be divided, by imagining we can just keep expanding the size of the pie for all. It's not gonna happen, and we may well all die trying.

It seems patently obvious to me that we can't deliver a way of just keeping everyone getting richer in perpetuity (the essential basis of Blairism). In fact it's looking less and less likely that we can even keep everyone where they are. So there are two possibilities:

- The super-rich keep getting richer, some of the middle class do as well, and gradually more of the poor starve, and starve worse. OR:

- Things are realigned to provide a more reasonable distribution of resources for everyone again, at the cost of a serious hit to the wealth of the super-rich, and to the concept of eternal "aspiration" among the middle.

The tories are in power because they're at least a little bit honest and realistic about this. They are fundamentally clear that they stand for the first alternative. Of course they play down the obscene degree to which limited resources are syphoned towards the super-rich, while playing up both the amount of opportunity actually available to others and the responsibility of the starving for their own situation. But at least they don't make any pretence that limitless personal opportunity and universal provision are compatible. They choose the first, and those who prefer the second don't have to vote for them.

Labour are out of power because they hadn't even started being honest about the alternatives yet. The vision of society they based their campaign on was based on denial, and people could see that. And it's interesting what happened once they DID start being honest about the alternatives: the candidate arguing most strongly for the first alternative (Liz Kendall) just appeared indistinguishable from the tories. So why would Labour bother having her as leader? And the other two who tried to sit in the middle and pretend we could continue to deny the fundamental incompatibility of the two outcomes just lost all credibility.

Since those are the only two possible outcomes, it makes sense to have a major political party arguing for each of them. At least we have a chance of that happening now and a basically rational two-sided political debate between them. If the public then want to go on choosing the first outcome, then that's just the way it is. At least they'll be choosing it because they prefer it to the alternative, rather than because there is no alternative.

Sendraks wrote:

GrahamH wrote:He seems to have quite forgotten who got the country into the mess of 2008, or at least failed to save us, was not "working families" or "Hard left" policies. To the extent it was a UK issue, wasn't it regurgitation of Thatcherite policies, housing bubbles and financial deregulation?

I think its a real challenge for some Labour supporters to confront Blair for what he was, simply because he was so successful. Its hard to look at the past and try to be critical of the period 1997-2010 and say "we don't want to be like that" in a public facing way. But, if you're not prepared to do that, then the Tories can and will throw back in Corbyn's face every time he challenges them on a policy that actually is just a continuation of what Labour did in 1997-2010.

Very difficult to say "I think the Blair Government was wrong" without alienating a load of supporters.

Haven't a majority of labour supporters (the sample that voted) just said "I think the Blair Government was wrong" ?

Emmeline wrote:

mcgruff wrote:I think actually we should burn Stephen Kinnock at the stake as an example to others like him.

I looked for the forum outrage at mcgruff's advocacy of murder, and found none. Something to bear in mind the next time the usual suspects throw a shitfit over me calling someone a scumbag or something.

Emmeline wrote:Re: Kinnock's article & the working class, which he says is shrinking.

Corbyn says Labour needs to win back the 5 million predominantly working class voters that Labour has lost since 1997.
Labour 1997 - 13.5 million votes
Labour 2015 - 9.3 million votes

Does the working class still exist in those numbers or are those missing voters now predominantly middle class?

Class schmass.

Kinnock's article used an outdated and irrelevant definition of working class, being those who earn their living as "manual labourers". Of course the proportion of the population doing that has dropped hugely since the 1970s. I fail to see how that is even relevant to the question of voting Labour or conservative though. Even if we take a completely mrjonno view of the world and regard everybody as voting purely out of self-interest, it's not whether you use your hands or your brain to make a living that determines whether you are even a traditional Labour or conservative voter; it's whether you rely on working for a wage, based on your time and effort, to make a living, or whether your living is partly dependent on more abstract financial factors such as property ownership, share ownership, inheritence, commission-based managerial work etc.

It just so happens that the state of technology meant that most people in the first group up until the 1970s were using their hands to make that living, but so what? The people staffing call centres and supermarkets today, working shit jobs for shit wages to fund shit lives may not be working class by Kinnock's definition. They sure are by Marx's though.

I posted some figures a while back in one of the political threads about mrjonno's conviction that everybody just votes according to class and because most people are middle class now, the tories are bound to win. They showed that actually, class has very little to do with voting now. The variation in votes for the two major parties by class is not nearly as great as many people imagine, and in fact the tories score very highly among C1 (skilled working class), while Labour score nearly as well among AB as they do among the lower middle and working class. The only group that shows a noticeably higher spike for Labour is the unemployed, and even that's not as high as you would expect.

In some ways less has changed than many people imagine. Despite more people owning a house and somewhat more (though still a small minority) being self employed, most people still primarily rely on earning a living by selling their labour based on time. Those people still far outnumber the people whose economic position is primarily determined by self-generating wealth and other factors. It just so happens that the tories (and largely, New Labour) have convinced enough of the first group of people that they will be personally better off under tory policies than Labour ones, largely on the basis of low income tax rates and home ownership.

But of course low income tax rates are a mixed blessing if you end up worse off anyway because you have to pay for all the services that used to be universal. And high house values are a mixed blessing if your kids are still sitting around in your living room at 40 hogging the TV remote because they can't get on the property ladder, and the underclass are camping on your doorstep because there's no more social housing. It's up to Labour, as it always has been, to make the case that it's not actually in most people's interests to buy into the tory lies about personal opportunity, when all they really mean is fucking over most of us for the benefit of a select few.

Beatsong wrote:

Emmeline wrote:Re: Kinnock's article & the working class, which he says is shrinking.

Corbyn says Labour needs to win back the 5 million predominantly working class voters that Labour has lost since 1997.
Labour 1997 - 13.5 million votes
Labour 2015 - 9.3 million votes

Does the working class still exist in those numbers or are those missing voters now predominantly middle class?

Class schmass.

Kinnock's article used an outdated and irrelevant definition of working class, being those who earn their living as "manual labourers".

If it's outdated and irrelevant then you need to tell the pollsters, census statisticians & social commentators because it appears they are using the standard definition too ie manual workers, which is the term Kinnock used.

I think Corbyn is using the same standard definition too because if he isn't, how does he know it's predominantly working class voters that Labour has lost since 1997?

Beatsong - very interesting analysis in your two posts. The idea that the Blairites are actually pursuing a failed model is quite acute, since of course, Corbyn has been accused of nostalgia on steroids, since he favours fiscal stimulus. Of course, many governments use this, especially when they think no-one has noticed.

But I think Osborne is pursing austerity partly to shrink the welfare state, and to target the poor and vulnerable. In part, this aims to shift wealth back to the wealthy, but is also (I think) an ideological commitment. Of course, it tends to flatten the economy!

Paul Mason's book 'Post-capitalism' has some interesting stuff on the post-war boom, which was really Keynesian at root, but which led to falling profits, and then, an attack on organized labour from the 70s onwards, and of course, the rise of neo-liberalism, Pinochet, and so on.

Fascinating how Blair for a period tried to synthesize neo-liberalism with 'Labour values'. Something had to give!