Britain’s New Class Divide
Politics is the clash between ideology and practice. It's time to take The Sniff Test.
Tories in Disguise
What we want and what we can have are two different things. The Labour government is finding that out. How Starmer steers the ship will decide his legacy.
Countries should be thought of as people. So says geopolitician George Friedman, who argues that the mix of what is desired and what is possible determines political outcomes. He rejects the idea that leaders forge the destiny of nations, arguing instead that they find purpose from the possible.
This view is echoed in the writings of Henry Kissinger. He noted that while day-to-day decisions are delegated to subordinates, leaders make morally ambiguous choices from incomplete information. Often they must decide between bad and worse outcomes, rather than good and bad. One consequence is that politicians fail to deliver on election manifestos because they desire outcomes that are not possible when in power.
The government is accused of being Tory over welfare reforms. Britain is sucked towards the abyss of deploying troops in Ukraine. This is not what the manifesto promised, but it is the hard choices prime ministers face. Starmer said we’d have grown ups in government and here they are.
Labour backbenchers are clear what they want for Britain. While centrist political culture clings to Tony Blair’s vision of Britain, more radical MPs champion social justice above all. They have strong support among educated urban elites, but are increasingly removed from the majority they claim to be liberating. The class divide in Britain is between those with and without a university degree.
This is the culmination of the long march of the left. It has spent decades taking over institutions, with universities chief among them. This is so successful that if graduates alone had the vote, Brexit could not have happened and Jeremy Corbyn would be Prime Minister.
Over 40% of adults completed tertiary education and one third have a bachelors degree or above. They control the arts, media, law, government and finance. They shape what Britain stands for, what it desires, but they do not determine what is possible.
Engaging Blair’s Legacy
“A force for good in the world” – Tony Blair
Blair’s Britain was to be a cultural superpower. Exports of music, fashion and the arts would bring influence around the globe. The apogee came in 2005 with the award of the Olympics to London. There in 2012, Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony won acclaim for its honest interpretation of history. He ignored traditional jingoism for the story of a modern, progressive and pluralistic Britain at a turning point. Der Spiegel called it “a spectacular lesson in Britishness that Europe can understand.” Those were the days.
Blair’s leadership canon was clear. Britain is a shining example of modern democracy, projecting liberal values abroad. He ended up looking like America’s lackey, his reputation stained by participation in the Gulf War and occupation of Afghanistan.
Starmer faces a similar reputational risk with new partners. As the US limits its role in European defence, there is an opportunity to rebuild ties with the EU through a common defence shield. President Macron revealed his priorities, by linking British involvement in European defence to fishing rights. Nonetheless, discussions continue about boots on the ground in Ukraine. Starmer will be damned if he does nothing, but even more so when the body bags arrive back in Brize Norton.
Blair’s Chancellor, Gordon Brown, promised Britain no more boom and bust. This vainglorious boast showed no understanding of how integrated global economies and markets function. Monetary authorities pumped cash into the economy in fear of the Millennium bug and pulled it out again when nothing happened. The US did the same, exacerbating the dotcom crash and causing a recession in the early noughties. This proved merely a warm up for the Global Financial Crisis.
Starmer inherited an economy that is not growing. Maybe this is what no more boom and bust looks like, but it is not winning him any favours. A YouGov survey released three days ago, shows over 70% of Britons think the economy is being handled badly.
Labour promised to fix public services. Blair’s third way centrism meant welfare-to-work, the boondoggle of public-private partnerships, and heavy spending on the NHS and education. This relies on giving people handouts and expecting them to be grateful for their situation, without feeling entitled to help. The backlash against even the modest reforms Rachel Reeves has proposed, indicates the challenge to Labour is no less than when Conservative George Osborne attempted the same.
While the vagaries of international relations and economics buffet all prime ministers, Blair’s lasting legacy is multiculturalism. This was where “Cool Britannia” met EU enlargement and the resulting mass migration. Multiculturism is the opposite of integration and requires a population to embrace new ways of life.
This is challenging for those who must make way for the arrivals. The burden falls on those without degrees, who lose access to housing, government services and employment. The 2021 census revealed that 48% of social housing in London is occupied by those born overseas.
Since the Brexit vote in 2016, 9.2 million immigrants have arrived in Britain. 5.6 million people have emigrated and there are net outflows of people from the EU. The newest arrivals are from war torn and impoverished parts of the world, with limited historic ties to Britain.
This wave of immigration is not driven by a demand for labour. While government think tanks argue population growth is always and everywhere a boost to the economy, this is only true if people have work to do. Deindustrialised Britain has limited need for millions of unskilled workers. Taxes making it more expensive to hire people pour petrol on the flames. Divide the economic pie by the growing population and each person’s share is smaller than five years ago.
Stifling the Protesters
To curb the inevitable unrest, our educated elites pass laws and clamp down on free speech. It is already a crime to be accused of causing someone offence and Labour is doubling down on that in the Employment Bill. As it is impossible to police every public conversation, this law passes the obligation onto the owners of pubs, restaurants and entertainment venues. The aim is an end to sexual harassment in the workplace, but the definition of harassment covers any way in which people identify.
It's late summer 2025. A recent graduate waits tables in between firing off hundreds of unanswered job applications. They overhear a group of systemic racists discussing the prevalence of mixed race couples in television adverts. They down tools and sue their employer. The restaurant closes, the owner seeks a job waiting tables, while the graduate travels abroad to find themselves funded by a compensation payment.
The Free Speech Union believes this scenario is possible as the Bill includes taking offence on behalf of others. Employees can sue employers for not taking all reasonable steps to prevent harassment. The word all will be added to existing law for emphasis. What steps are reasonable is delegated to a Minister of the Crown to decide.
This is the 2025 evolution of nudge, where public behaviour is controlled by the fear the state is always watching. If the state is not present, it recruits parts of the population to spy on others. Did we think authoritarianism would look exactly like Orwell’s 1984, or a rerun of the East German Stasi? Yet we have thoughtcrime and dobbing in our neighbours in Britain today.
Pushing Back on Liberal Dominance
The acute problem when people always agree is they compete with each other to be the most zealous. Rather than maintain a stable set of values, the group shifts towards a more radical position. This happens in unchanging governments, religions and corporate headquarters that close themselves off to outside influence.
The stability of Western democracy is a result of the unstable back and forth between people with different views. The fact that no one is happy about everything is what balance of power means. When positions go unchallenged they become unchallengeable. Health care spending is the best example in the UK.
Britain’s educated elite is ignorant of the emerging counter culture. It could not fathom Brexit, cannot understand Farage and stares open mouthed at Trump. When it looks around it sees only confirmation of its views. It steels itself for the battle for its truth.
The new class divide was typified by the Covid lockdowns. University educated, white collar workers embraced remote working, bought a dog and saved a fortune on the commute. The uneducated delivered them home gyms and subsidised work stations, or were laid off. Britain is the last major economy not to have recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
In the US, the Federalist Society formed in 1982 to push back against the cultural dominance of the left. It focuses on the law and positioning conservative judges for high office. This worked so well that federal courts, stiffened by the good fortune of multiple Trump appointments, have rolled back liberal initiatives of the last 50 years. This is how the Supreme Court undid the Roe vs Wade abortion ruling.
There is no European equivalent of the Federalist Society. As a result, push back is from populist movements - Reform, France’s National Rally and the AfD in Germany. The establishment is surprised and horrified and switches to overdrive in its attempts to isolate and condemn these movements. Yet they are the consequence of the contempt of the elite and pouring more scorn only strengthens them.
Starmer’s legacy will be in how he steers between what the educated want and what the uneducated make possible.