POLITICS
Mr Blair was welcoming the middle classes and hitting at the toffs
BRUCE ANDERSON
Any politician who talks about class can be sure of an attentive audience. It is a subject of obsessive interest to many of the English; it also influences their voting behaviour. That is a topic of obsessive interest to Tony Blair, hence his recent speech in praise of the middle classes, inviting the whole nation to look forward to a middle-class destiny, and a New Labour one.
His lecture reminded us — as if we needed it — of Mr Blair's serene contempt for old Labour pieties. In his view, old Labour's class rancour was both hypocriti- cal and destructive. Hypocritical, in that many of the party's leaders were drawn from the middle classes; destructive, because its proletarian affectations alienat- ed many potential Labour voters. Mr Blair believes that during most of its pre-Blair history, the Labour party was run in the electoral interests of the Tory party and that its class warriors played a crucial role in ensuring Tory hegemony. He intends to ensure that those days never return.
He also appears to believe that he is in a strong position, in that his own psephologi- cal heartlands are secure, so that he can launch his political offensives in what used to be regarded as Tory territory. Mr Blair may be propounding a post-class politics, but it rests on two class assumptions; that the working class will remain loyal to Labour, while much of the middle class can be persuaded to desert the Tories.
But before considering the validity of Mr Blair's assumptions, there is a basic elec- toral question which is still unanswered: between 1992 and 1997, the turn-out fell by two million; who were those absent voters? All logic, and a great deal of anecdotal evidence, would suggest that they were disillusioned Tories. Everyone involved in the election met such persons on the doorsteps, while also meeting Labour supporters who were desperate for victory at last. It seems inconceivable that anyone who had voted Labour in 1992 would have failed to do so in 1997.
Yet there is a problem. If it was Tories who stayed at home, the fall in turn-out should have been greater in Tory seats than in Labour ones; in reality, no such pattern emerges. One commentator, David Carlton, goes so far as to argue that it was working- class, old Labour voters who stayed at home, pre-emptively disillusioned by Mr Blair's public school demeanour and middle- class ethos, while for exactly the same reasons, Mr Blair was more than compen- sated with Tory middle class defections. This seems more ingenious than plausible. I am convinced that the bulk of the stay-at- homes were Tories, although it does seem impossible to prove the point.
But even if the working classes remained loyal to Mr Blair in 1997, will they continue to do so? There is a lot of talk in Tory cir- cles of emulating Disraeli and devising some brilliant political stratagem which will cut Mr Blair off from the labourite working classes. But there is a difficulty: what stratagem? There is no obvious equivalent of the 1867 Reform Bill in modern British politics. There is every reason to suppose that the Labour tribe described by Si6n Simon elsewhere in this issue will continue to align itself with Mr Blair; it has nowhere else to go.
That is not true of large sections of the Tory tribe; indeed, it has not been true for a generation, despite favourable demographic circumstances. In 1964, Alec Douglas-Home was a derided figure, while Harold Wilson was the heavyweight champion of British politics. Yet Sir Alec only just lost, and won over 43 per cent of the vote. Nineteen years on, Margaret Thatcher was the heavyweight champion; Michael Foot, an amiable old booby leading a party of lunatics. In those couple of decades, the middle class had grown in size, and not only that. Home ownership has always been a good guide to voting behaviour; owners Tory, municipal tenants Labour. So with the sale of council houses, the Tories should also have bought at least a million new voters. Add to this the memories of the Wilson/Callaghan gov- ernment, plus a final detail; Mrs Thatcher had just won a war. Given all this, the result of the 1983 election was extraordinary. The electoral system did ensure that Mrs Thatcher had a large majority, but with a smaller share of the vote than Sir Alec had obtained in 1964.
Margaret Thatcher's popularity is a myth; equally mythic, the new social groups she is supposed to have recruited to the Tory party. Not until these myths have been dis- pelled can we begin to address the most interesting question in contemporary poli- tics. Why, in terms of voting percentages, did the Tories perform so badly throughout the 1980s? To some extent this was Mrs Thatcher's doing. That restless and radical spirit was never designed for popularity and she did undoubtedly frighten away some potential Tory voters. There never were any 'cuts'; during most of her years in office, she spent like a profligate social democrat. She did, however, have a cutting body language, which helped 'the cuts' to become a potent political slogan, and thus kept down the Tory vote. But could it also be that the Tory party is burdened by its historical associations with wealth and privilege? This brings us back to class.
The middle class is anything but homoge- neous. No social groups are more sharply separated than the lower middle class and the upper middle class; no social classes are more likely to deplore each other's habits and accents. There is absolutely nothing to bring them together in the same political unit, except a common enemy which is so threatening as to force them to disregard their reciprocal detestation. The Labour party used to provide just such an enemy. Mr Blair is determined that it will no longer do so.
In the speech, he was not just appealing to the middle classes and the aspirant mid- dle classes; he was inviting them to contrast themselves with the old establishment. His aim is to portray the Tory party as the party of the toffs and to tell the lower middle class multitudes that they are free to express their social resentments in the bal- lot box without any risk that a Labour gov- ernment will increase their income tax. It is a cunning ploy, and Mr Blair has a further linguistic advantage.
In the Fifties and Sixties, the very word `Labour' was a deterrent to the lower middle classes. Its associations with manual labour and the labour exchange reminded them of a world from which they had struggled to escape. Partly because there is so much less manual labour taking place these days, I suspect that the word is losing some of its old resonances — and anyway, Tony Blair is determined to ensure that when the voters think of Labour, they think of him Some of this is calculation, but much of it is Mr Blair's feline political instincts. We are going to hear a lot more about class, for the PM has now decided that it is safe for New Labour to talk about the subject. Safe, that is, as long as they are referring to the middle class.
Previous page
