FURTHERMORE
Don't vote for the middle class
PETRONELLA WYATT
This is a golden age of the bourgeoisie. There are now no `no-go' areas for the mid- dle class. John Prescott is proof of this. His defection must be the most momentous since that of Philippe Egalite — only he did it the other way around.
Speak for yourself, Mr Prescott. I would rather sit this one out. My sympathies are entirely with John Canvess, the secretary of Mr Prescott's local Trades and Labour Club. He said, 'We don't want any truck with the middle class here.'
I am fed up with the middle class, or Middle England as they are sometimes called. They have been around for too long. It is the same tired old faces: Melvyn Bragg, Harold Pinter, Carmen Callil, Stephen Fry, Anita Roddick. They have run out of ideas and have nothing new to say.
They are demagogic, unscrupulous and incompetent. Take the way in which the middle class fights elections. Of course, they would rather take the way politicians fight elections. They think that elections are only fought by politicians. But voters fight elections too. And where are the prin- ciples of middle-class voters? They bribe politicians with vague promises of votes if taxes are cut. Then they do not deliver. I, for one, am no longer prepared to be taken in.
Is there a single member of the middle class who is not a compulsive and congeni- tal liar? They are up to their necks in sleaze. During the 1992 election campaign, the middle class assured the opinion poll- sters that Labour had the best and most convincing policies on every issue that mat- tered. Then they went out and voted Tory.
The miserable catalogue of gaffes is too long to repeat here. It suffices to say that the middle class is simply not up to the job. Can it really be claimed, for instance, that it is the class of fiscal prudence? It has a his- tory of favouring low taxes at the same time as higher spending on public services. Its figures simply don't add up. According to a recent Gallup poll, members of the middle class would like tax cuts but worry that they will result in more National Insurance con- tributions. What pusillanimity! They would like more money in their pockets and stable prices in the shops, but they are fearful of policies designed to achieve this.
Middle England is a curious combination of selfishness and naivety. And what naivety! Apparently, a majority no longer believe that Labour is a party of high taxa- tion. Why? On the sole evidence that Mr Blair has told them so. This is New Labour, after all. Actually, it is not. It is Old Labour. One of the last Labour leaders to tell Middle England the same thing about taxes was Harold Wilson. During his two terms in office, he raised the standard rate by Sp and introduced a top tax of around 83 per cent.
Mr Blair still refuses to disclose who will pay what. He says that he does not wish to penalise those at the top, but Gordon Brown, the shadow Chancellor, is refusing to rule out the possibility of a 60 per cent rate. Does this make Labour the party of low taxation? Not when Clare Short appears to suggest that those earning around £34,000 a year should be penalised; not when Labour's spending plans for pen- sioners alone would cost another £13 bil- lion; not when Harriet Harman, the shad- ow Employment Secretary, proposes subsidies to create jobs. And what of those Labour councils? They will not vanish overnight like Job's boils.
But still it appears that Mr Blair has Mid- dle England in his pocket. It is only a shame that it was ever discovered. Most people think that the idea of Middle Eng- land was invented by some spin doctor. They believe it is an anglicised version of Middle America, somewhere dreamt up by the Republicans in the 1980s. In fact, Mid- dle England was first spotted by a pious Anglican with a big, bushy beard, a top hat and an hereditary title, who lived in a very large house.
He was Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne- Cecil, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, and the late-19th-century Conservative prime `"Prescilla", it's an anagram of scare".' minister. The Tories had hitherto relied chiefly on the landed and agricultural vote, but Salisbury recognised that the newly enfranchised middle class and its aspira- tions were the key to the future. In 1882 he wrote: 'Nearly everything hangs for us on these middling sorts of people.' Salisbury was right. He fought five general elections and won three of them easily.
Mr Blair would like to achieve something similar. Just as Salisbury began handing over the local associations to new middle- class leaders, Mr Blair's party has seduced middle-income earners. According to one of those surveys, Labour now has a higher proportion of middle-class members than the Tories. It is the 'Rape of the Subur- bans', only this time they are consenting. The only thing now that stands between the middle class and certain destruction is its wits. Unfortunately that is not adequate protection.
Perhaps the most irritating thing about Mr Blair is his air, which is one of believing he has a divine dispensation. In every pro- nouncement he makes, it is evident that he imagines himself to be an instrument of God's will. We are told that when the Israelites invaded the Promised Land they were carrying out the Divine Purpose — we know this because the Israelites wrote the history books, not the Canaanites or the Hivites. Abraham Lincoln was the agent of Manifest Destiny in freeing America from slavery. Now Mr Blair has chosen to bran- dish the Lord's sword in the name of New Labour. If Tories are not exactly damned, Labour converts are promised a paradise more attractive than that of the Conserva- tives, just as guacamole is better for you than beef.
It is the essence of this sort of determin- ism to see the struggle of antagonists as one against destiny. This is why it is so handy politically. It enables Mr Blair to argue that the prescient voter will put himself on the winning side as soon as possible. Belief in a divine mission, unfortunately, is one of the convictions that has most injured mankind. Cromwell is alleged to have said to the enemy before a great battle, 'I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.' One doubts, somehow, whether Mr Blair has ever asked that ques- tion of himself.
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