During Kemi Badenoch’s leadership race, a video surfaced in which she claimed she “became working class” when working at McDonald’s at 16. This lead some people online to question the logic of her reasoning. Many argued that talking of class as though it were easily malleable is to underplay the entrenched nature of class in Britain; one cannot choose to become working class or drop the label when they feel like it. This discourse online reflects the deep disconnect between how class is spoken about by politicians, and how it is felt by most in society.
Although class has changed in modern Britain – it has become less attached to occupation, and a collective sense of class identity has been eroded – it certainly persists in other ways. Higher education remains a strong indicator of one’s class, with just 28% of graduates identifying as working class, and the social capital a person has greatly affects their future income. Whereas, within politics, there seems to be a different rhetoric: one that denies the persisting class divisions. Recently, Keir Starmer came under fire for an interview he gave to the BBC in which he defined a “working person;” contentiously, he claimed those who make money from shares and investment are not what he considers to be “working people.” This was controversial to say, but why? Wouldn’t most working people agree that most do not have the spare money lying around to throw into stocks?
Similarly, Starmer was grilled in the Commons on his decision to add VAT to private schools, with MPs arguing that many families who send their children to private schools save to afford to do so and would be unfairly taxed. The implication here is that private schools are not only for the elite, but for ambitious parents who saves to send their children to a private institution. Again, our politicians fail to face reality: the vast majority of people attending these schools are undeniably the most well-off in society. This rhetoric, which underplays the role of class divides, simply does not resemble Britian’s reality.
Class is dynamic. It has changed drastically in only a few generations, and mobility between classes is certainly achievable. However, we must not use this as a smokescreen to the structures that persist within Britain. The “working person” does not choose to be so of their own volition, nor can they decide to depart from their class in the way Kemi Badenoch seemed to imply. So long as politicians deny this fact, politics will fail to adequately address class and inequality in any meaningful way.
“Official portrait of Kemi Badenoch MP crop 2, 2024” by Roger Harris is licensed under CC BY 3.0.