Could the UK soon have the most working-class government ever? | Labour

One of the defining images of the conservative era emerged before the election that gave birth to it.

The infamous photo of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford University's Bullingdon Club was published in 2007, 20 years after it was taken. Cameron's coalition of millionaires was filled with private school alumni, including Chancellor George Osborne, who wielded the axe of austerity.

More recently, the majority of Rishi Sunak’s first cabinet came from private schools, according to figures released in 2022 by the Sutton Trust, a social mobility charity. Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty are estimated to be worth $651 million.

But by Friday morning, Britain could have its most educated cabinet in decades. The shadow cabinet ahead of the general election is 77.5% state-educated, with seven out of 31 having attended fee-paying schools.

Public education only tells a limited picture of the socio-economic class of citizens. Public schools range from schools in poorer neighborhoods to selective secondary schools in wealthy neighborhoods. But many leading members of the shadow cabinet grew up in working-class families, sometimes in destitution. Jon Ashworth, the general treasurer of the shadow cabinet, said last week that the new cabinet could well be the most working-class cabinet ever.

It's a long time, and Ashworth's suggestion that this question should be investigated is made more difficult by the difficulty of defining socioeconomic class. But there is no doubt that this will be the state's most highly educated and working-class cabinet in decades, in terms of its origins, and just as Cameron's elite cabinet has become indelibly linked to austerity that he put in place, some hope that the Labor cabinet, more representative of society, will have the opposite effect on the policies and priorities of the new government.

Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter and former director of the Sutton Trust, said: When it comes to cabinet, if you have a prime minister from a very small part of society, the The danger is that they are less understanding and less empathetic to the daily challenges we face, particularly today with increasing poverty, child poverty and growing inequality.

I believe that if we have a cabinet with a majority of state-educated members, it is more likely that they will be supportive of some of the social justice policies that people like me will advocate for.

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Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy echoed that statement last week when he criticised some of the small-mindedness of state schools he had seen among the Conservatives. “That’s not the class of people that Britain needs to lead it today, and that’s what my own history tells me,” he said. said the New statesman.

But what good is a workers' government led by a toolmaker's son if its policies aren't up to par? After 14 years of rising homelessness and cuts to welfare claimants, the Labor Party manifesto says little about building social housing or reversing welfare cuts, notably refusing to commit to removing the two-child limit for universal credit.

“I think they're afraid of a backlash, aren't they?” said Charlotte Hughes, an anti-poverty and welfare cuts campaigner who is also active in her local Greater Manchester Labour branch. “We've only got a week left now, so they're limited in what they can say themselves at the moment, but it would be great if one of them said we're planning to scrap it or make changes to it or something. That's just not true.”

“I know that Labour is very cautious and cautious,” Elliot Major said. “But the hope, and I'm optimistic about this, is that when they come to power there will be a stronger commitment to social justice than we're perhaps seeing in the current election.

It is not just a question of who is in the Cabinet, but also of who they consult. [Governments] are the product of the advisers who surround these ministers, the civil servants who surround them, said Elliot Major. So what's really crucial, in my opinion, is that when they seek advice and opinions, they draw on a truly diverse group of people within the inner sanctum of government.

Shadow cabinet members may have come from working-class backgrounds, but they have all managed to climb the corporate ladder. Their recent experience of precarious work, demands for social benefits and substandard housing will come from people showing up at polling stations in their constituency.

They have a better idea, a better basis and a more realistic view of life than the Tories. Everybody is a profiteer, Hughes said. I'm willing to give them a chance. That's all we can do, isn't it? Because what's the alternative?