The irrelevance of toff-bashing

The government is hoping that the electorate will reject the Conservative party on the basis that they are a bunch of toffs. But it is not at all obvious that the British hold their traditional elites in all that much disdain. The question, I suspect, is how we interpret the cultural politics of the 1990s.

In terms of cultural sociology, John Major's period in office was arguably the most interesting in Britain since the 1970s. It was circa 1990-97 that working class identity went from being a source of political and economic antagonism, to becoming a form of cultural capital that could be exported and plundered for profit. Britpop, Lad culture, football and a re-remembering of Britain's 1960s as a mod decade (working class) rather than a hippy one (middle class) enabled Britain to reinvent class as a cultural division—and therefore a more fluid one—rather than an economic one.

There was a sunny six-year period (between the launch of Loaded magazine and the emergence of the word 'chav' ) in which men with shaved heads and trainers suddenly appeared appealing to the liberal middle class, comfortingly local yet foreign at the same time. When Jarvis Cocker muttered in 1995 "take your Year in Provence and shove it up your ass" he no doubt inadvertently spoke for many middle class men as well. To this day, the number of people bracketed as 'working class' by sociologists is falling, while the number identifying as such is rising.

While this was going on, John Major's government looked like an old guard who'd had their day. The disappearance of an antagonistic working class surely reduced many voters' psychological attachment to elderly men in pin-striped suits, just as the end of the cold war meant that Americans were less inclined to have a protective father (i.e. Republican) in the White House.

But we have to be wary of granting these cultural phenomena too much political weight or historical permanence. Would things really have been any different if the Tories had removed their ties or talked football? Moreover, once class becomes understood in cultural terms as opposed to economic ones, no class is ever doomed to the historical dustbin, but can wax and wane over the years. Some variant of toff culture can quite easily make a comeback, if only due to the vagaries of fashion.

Staffed by wonks, New Labour retains a more economic notion of class than most of the British electorate, and is acutely conscious of the contrasting backgrounds of the Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet. The former believe in meritocracy because they see themselves as examples of it, while painting the Camerons as examples of aristocracy. But how much does that distinction resonate with the British public? Aristocrats are no richer than meritocrats in 2008, in fact the reverse is often the case (as John Hutton has crudely celebrated). There is nothing intrinsically more 'normal' about Ed Balls spending his youth poring over economics books than Cameron quaffing expensive wine. To claim otherwise is the narcissism of small differences. If Britain has anything like Australia's 'tall poppy syndrome', it may even be more hostile to social climbers (that is, meritocrats) than to lucky hedonists (aristocrats). If the latter confess to being a bit lazy but up for a bit of fun, then they may already be speaking the same language as many voters. Just ask George W Bush.

What is most galling about New Labour's attack on toffs is that it trivialises and pastiches the sense of economic injustice that many on the Left have expressed, but which the government has steadfastly refused to acknowledge. Fierce inequalities in capital ownership (underpinned by the housing boom), in educational attainment, and even in health are suddenly being obscured by the suggestion that Eton College is the biggest threat to social justice today. The strategy is unlikely to succeed, and doesn't deserve to.