Aditya Chakrabortty seeks to analyse Keir Starmer’s and Labour’s attitudes to class (For Labour to reach alienated working-class voters, Starmer needs to treat them less like tools, 12 October). My background is similar to Starmer’s: son of a unionised skilled craftsman, brought up in a modest suburban semi on the edge of London, but thanks partly to a free university education with a grant – I was the first in my family to go – I’ve achieved professional middle-class status. And, yes, I reach for my cafetiere first thing in the morning.
Chakrabortty argues that Starmer does not really know where he stands. I’d argue that Labour’s language, rooted in aspiration and the notion of the “class ceiling”, suggests otherwise; that being working class is not something that you celebrate, but that you leave behind. It celebrates those, like Starmer and me, who have moved out. In a society in which full-time work fails to pay the bills for a growing number of people, and with social mobility increasingly dependent on inheritance, it’s not an approach that can begin to address our huge inequalities.
Neil Schofield-Hughes
Cardiff
