We need to talk about class

We hear a lot about racism in politics. But we don’t hear so much about another form of prejudice that is arguably just as important, and indeed adds an important dimension to the understanding of racism: social class.

What do I mean by social class? It is quite difficult to pin down exactly: it reflects combinations of social circumstances, such as education and where you live. Social class confers advantage to some and disadvantage to others, and to gaps in mutual comprehension. For example there is total exasperation in the Labour Party between middle-class metropolitan liberals and conservative working class union members. There is a lot of evidence that working-class people suffer disadvantage, for example in the job market. Middle-class people are often clueless about how to deal with this, except by creating abstract talking points such as “social mobility”, and trying to make everybody middle class like them. Middle-class privilege goes largely unrecognised.

Funnily enough, I have often heard the assertion that British society is riven by class distinctions which have barely changed over generations, in a uniquely British way, in contrast to both European neighbours and former colonies. But this goes hand in hand with outdated stereotypes of what class looks like. This divides society into upper, middle and working classes. Upper class people are thought of as landed aristocrats, middle class people as suburban professionals and working class people as blue-collar workers. All are predominantly white, and the common mental picture cleaves to old-fashioned gender stereotypes too. In fact social class has changed radically over the last few generations, and the divisions in British society are not particularly unique to Britain.

Changes to working classes have received some recognition through the work of Claire Ainsley, author of The new working class: how to win hearts, minds and votes, who is now working for Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party. Much of the modern working class is from ethnic minorities or are recent immigrants, many are in insecure job contracts, and the women are as likely to be working as the men. This analysis has to be taken seriously, but it may distract from more important dynamics that affect working classes as a whole.

The new upper class is perhaps better understood. This is the elite of the super-rich. The new aristocracy is no longer so closely tied to the ownership of land, but instead to big business. It has deep political influence in nearly all political systems, from the United States to China, and is doubtless behind the erosion of capitalist competition. But we should not exaggerate its influence either: western democracies (and the Chinese Communist Party, come to that) retain powers to hold it in check.

It is the new middle classes that seem to be the least understood. They are as heterogeneous as the new working classes, but I know of no work comparable to Ms Ainsley’s trying to get to grips with its complexity. The artist Grayson Perry observed two very different middle classes in a television series exploring class. On the one hand he talked to the anxious inhabitants of a suburban housing development, keeping up with appearances and ever-changing fashions. On the other there were self-confident liberals who didn’t care what others thought of them. And what about those young metropolitan Momentum activists creating Labour’s collision with the party’s working class roots? They clearly feel that society is stacked against them, for example for property ownership, and yet they are university educated and have access to professional careers.

Two forces in particular are shaping the new class landscape. The first is economic. Working class livelihoods have always been vulnerable to advances in technology. Advances in manufacturing and office technology has shrunk the number of traditional working class blue- and white-collar jobs, replacing them something more rootless. This has militated against traditional working class solidarity and union organisation, and reduced both pay and job security. The second is the massive expansion of education. Educational standards have risen across the board, and the availability of university education has increased dramatically. This has opened up access to middle class work, both expanding its extent, and making it more precarious. Meanwhile immigration has served to backfill working class roles from families that have transitioned to middle class. The interaction of these forces is complex and their effects are not well understood. In my opinion (I am getting a bit ahead of the evidence here) it has created a big problem of what might be called middle-class privilege (though my mother would have objected to that use of the word “privilege”, which to her was loaded with a sense of responsibility). If you are born into a working-class family it is much harder to make your way into a good middle-class life than it should be, based on ability. And in particular if you make a poor start in your educational career it is much harder to make progress than it used to be. Meanwhile the living conditions of working class people don’t get enough attention from the political class, making life harder than it should be.

Let me illustrate the new class dynamics a few examples. The first is about language. Grammar and, to a lesser extent, spelling serve a linguistic function to reduce ambiguity. But the opprobrium attracted by bad usage is totally disproportionate to this usefulness – it is surely used as a means of maintaining a class filter. If your grammar and spelling is a bit weak, you are liable to be dismissed as not being up to standard, even if you communicate quite clearly. I speak as somebody that enjoys linguistic pedantry – but I have to be careful it doesn’t get in the way.

A further example is the use of educational qualifications to pre-select job applicants for interview. This doubtless makes sense in some cases, but it is applied much more widely than it needs to be. When recruiting myself I tried to disregard qualifications, especially if the individual had a significant work track record. That track record, and understanding how the individual goes about their work, was to me much more important. Indeed overcoming a poor educational start is a sign of ability. And yet sifting by educational qualifications is deeply embedded into our job market without regard to how appropriate it might be.

A revealing linguistic tic is the habit of middle-class people calling working-class jobs as “low-skilled”. This has rightly been called-out during the Coronavirus crisis in the case of care workers, but it remains pervasive. It demeans working-class people, who work often requires a lot of skill, but not of the sort you get through a university degree.

Class cuts through racial politics. The most egregious racism comes from white working class people – who think that non-white people (or immigrants) are being given an unfair advantage. This may be well-known, but few seem interested in finding out what drives these feelings – it is easier to put it down to working class ignorance. A different class dimension affects the Conservative government’s narrative on racism. Led by middle-class people from ethnic minorities (like the Home Secretary Priti Patel, or the Downing Street adviser Munira Mirza), the message is that a lot of the fuss about racism comes from a victim mentality in many non-white people, which can be overcome if they engage more constructively with society at large. This has led to a spectacular parliamentary spat between Ms Patel and Labour minority MPs with a more working-class background, who complained about being “gaslighted”. The truth is that the experience of racism for ethnic minority working-class people is very different from those from middle classes. The current fuss is driven mainly by a cry of pain from working-class non-whites.

And then we have the case of university tuition fees. These are an attempt to move the cost of university tuition to those that benefit most from it – a push back against middle-class privilege. But those middle classes are often enraged by them – hence Labour’s promise to abolish them at the last election. Their argument is that state-funded university tuition improves access to it and hence social mobility. But this is a bit like the Conservatives’ attempts to address the high cost of housing by subsidising first-time buyers. The substantive way to improve lives of working class people is through making their work better-paid and more secure, and to reduce the cost of life’s essentials, such as housing. There is at last some sign that both Conservative and Labour politicians are starting to recognise it (I wish I could say the same for my own Liberal Democrats, who have become something of a middle-class ghetto – though not irretrievably).

That is welcome. But politicians need to address two further aspects of the class system. The first is fairness – ensuring that people from working class backgrounds are not disadvantaged by prejudice. The second is empowerment – to give all communities, working-class or middle-class, more say over their lives. One big cause of working class dissatisfaction is that they feel sick that things are done to them without their consent. This was ably picked up by the Leave campaign in the Brexit referendum. But politicians are better at exploiting anger than dealing with its causes.

Deadly and contagious, this virus is reshaping our society

When the pandemic started to seriously intrude into our daily lives, in March, my view was the it might accelerate some changes, but it was being overplayed by some commentators as a society-changing event. My view is changing. And it is changing because the virus is proving so hard either to beat or to live with. It just won’t go away. In this week’s statement the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, made some steps towards acknowledging this. But many people are still in denial.

It is too early to develop a clear view of how this pandemic is evolving. But I can see at least three phases. The first phase is over. This saw the initial emergence of the disease, and immediate hard lockdowns to try and contain its spread, alongside the mobilisation of the health systems. In East Asia and Europe, and in some parts of America (such as New York) this strategy has succeeded in preventing or stemming a rapid advance. Elsewhere weak health systems or perverse political leadership means that the disease is still spreading rapidly. But that aside we are now in an awkward second phase. The lockdowns are being eased, but alongside this the disease is making local breakouts. It is becoming clearer that restrictions on our daily lives cannot be relaxed fully. Even if the disease can be stamped out in some areas, it remains prevalent in neighbouring ones, and the threat of it returning ever-present.

We still don’t know enough about the virus that is causing all the trouble, how it spreads, and its effects on the human body. But some aspects are becoming clearer. The first is that it is deadly. It does not seem to affect many of the people it infects, and some people seem to think that it merely hastens the demise of people already at death’s door. And yet 20-30% of the population appears to be vulnerable in most places, and it has the capacity to double the death-rate, or more. Hospitals become overwhelmed and unable to deal with other health conditions. The second aspect is that it is highly contagious, much more so than other viruses that are deadlier to the infected (such as ebola). Just how contagious is unknown, but we do know that super spreading events occur, where dozens of people are infected by a single individual at once. Being indoors seems dangerous, as does being in proximity to people who are exhaling heavily, such as people singing, shouting or exercising. Wearing masks seems to be a significant help in reducing infection risk. What makes the virus so much of a problem is this combination of lethality and contagiousness. We are conditioned to deal with diseases that are highly contagious but not so deadly (like most flu) or deadlier but much less contagious. To these two known aspects there is an important unknown. Does catching the disease confer immunity to it? There is a widespread assumption that it does, meaning that we can expect herd immunity to arise at some point, when most people can’t catch or spread the virus. But the emerging evidence is troubling. Antibody tests show low rates of prevalence even in places where the disease has been widespread. And there are reports of people being infected multiple times. A second unknown is how quickly we can get an effective vaccine. There has been impressive progress, but plenty of reason to be cautious.

So where does that leave us? Developed societies have no choice but to try and contain the disease. This means changing behaviours to reduce the risk of catching it. This arises partly through public policy and partly through private choice. As I said in my previous post this means that many people are going to avoid social gatherings indoors, including going out to pubs and restaurants. The more prevalent the disease at any time and place, the more such measures have to be taken. The best we can hope for is containing the disease to low prevalence, allowing quite high levels if freedom, but stamping on local outbreaks as they occur. This is being done most successfully in East Asia; in Europe Germany is the main large exemplar. But even this is far from normal. The big problem is that we are going to have to live with this disease for a year at least and probably a lot longer. This has profound consequences.

The main consequence is in the world of work, and in the economy generally. There are two main aspects to this. First is that sectors that rely on close social contact and free movement are going to shrink, perhaps drastically. This includes hospitality and travel. The second is that productivity in most sectors is going to be dented as health precautions take effect. This will inevitably reduce the standard of living. Prices will rise faster than pay; taxes will probably have to rise to curb excess demand and inflation. All this is too much for most people to take on all at once. Many are still trying to negotiate with the virus. I hear owners of indoor gyms complaining about not being allowed to open, like other businesses are. And yet an indoor gym must be one of the best spreading environments conceivable, after a mass indoor choir.

So how did Mr Sunak face up to this huge challenge in his budget statement this week? Pretty well in the circumstances. The most important thing is that he is pivoting from trying to keep old jobs alive (e.g. through the furlough scheme) to creating new ones, in particular focusing efforts on younger people, whose livelihoods are most at risk. His generosity towards the hospitality sector with his VAT scheme and meal discounts may look hopeless against the tide of events – but it does demonstrate some empathy towards one of the sectors most under pressure, which could reduce the short-term trauma somewhat. His £1,000 bonus for firms that retain furloughed staff until January looks harder to justify. It is hard to believe that it will make much difference to job retention, and yet it is estimated to cost huge sums. Surely it would have been better to top up benefits for the out-of-work. His reduction of stamp duty on property purchases looks like an expensive sop to party donors – though I personally stand to benefit.

But, as most people see, this is only a start. In the pipeline are more job losses and business failures, which will bring more problems in their wake. There is also an upcoming crisis in local government finance, as central government support to meet the extra costs of the crisis is woefully inadequate, and the role local government needs to play in combatting the virus is becoming ever larger. This will be the third phase of the pandemic, as the economic crisis deepens, while the struggle to contain the virus continues. Conventional economic management tools are not going to help as much as they should be. A lot of the problem is restriction to the supply side of the economy, while demand is suppressed by fear as much as lack of funds – so boosting demand simply risks creating inflation or a currency crisis. However job creation in public services: health care, social care and education, looks like a sensible way forward. Lower productivity means more people will be needed in these sectors. A rebalancing of the economy from private to public sector will surely mean tax rises in due course, but with no shortage of liquidity in financial markets the government can probably defer some of the hard decisions.

And meanwhile the public will have to confront some hard truths. The virus shows that the free-wheeling individualism at the core of western societies has its limits. It is not sustainable to suggest that individuals can judge the health risks for themselves, since by spreading a lethal disease the consequences of their actions will mainly be felt by others. The failure of so many people in Britain and parts of America to wear masks in public shows how far we have to go. We have something to learn form the East Asians. But not China. That is another story.