At the Battle of Ideas conference this year I spoke, alongside a panel of others, at the session Are we still a classless society, Mr. Cameron? An audio recording of this debate can be heard here. A loose transcipt of my introductory speech was published at The Independent's blog page here. And recently, a much longer version of this article was published at the Battle of Ideas website as part of the Battles in Print series here.
2 comments:
I hate a question to you about the classless society. You always seem so anti-middle/upper class. Is your idea of a classless society not just a society where the only class it is acceptable to be is working class?
In a truly classless society, it should not matter if you are the son of a bus conductor or a stockbroker - and I believe that the fact that a stockbroker's son followed a bus conductor's as Conservative PM shows that the Tory party at least, is a classless party.
It's the other way round: the middle classes have a problem with the working-classes - for either being 'sheep' or for 'not knowing their place' when they go on strike - and my articles are a response to that.
I'm all in favour of upward social mobility and I have no time for 'workerists'. We should all aspire to more. The Tory Party attracts those who have done well, from whatever family backgrounds, and then wants to draw up the ladder to prevent others from following.
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