An account of becoming middle class is too pious but worth arguing with, says David Goodhart
by David Goodhart / May 19, 2016 / Leave a commentPublished in June 2016 issue of Prospect Magazine

Many jobs such as cleaning and retail are now regarded as being “for failures or foreigners” ©Photofusion/Rex/Shutterstock
Read more: Does class still drive British politics?
A few months ago, the comedian David Baddiel gave a newspaper interview in which he described himself as lower middle class. As he went to the north London private school Haberdashers’ Aske’s (albeit on a scholarship) and Cambridge University, I thought that was stretching a point and tweeted something about it.
He was unhappy about being accused of inverted snobbery and I got a clobbering from his many fans on Twitter. But I thought his self-description said something interesting about the increasing fluidity and subjectivity of social class.

Lynsey Hanley tussles with the idea that her individual advance is a betrayal of her class ©Photographed by David Yeo./www.davidyeo.co.uk
Lynsey Hanley might also be described as lower middle class. Her father had a white-collar job and her family owned their own home. They had expectations of upward mobility for their precocious only child. The fact that she chooses to describe herself as re…
Andrew A.
huge working class