Working class Starmer vs. working class Rayner: who wins ?

Some of the older readers among you may remember when the Labour politician Michael Meacher (who died in 2015) took the political columnist Alan Watkins, of 'The Observer' to court in 1988 because Watkins had cast doubt on Meacher's working class credentials in an article. I cannot remember the outcome of the case, but it was certainly the most pointless and ridiculous act of Meacher's political career. Starmer is, in fact, only the third Labour leader since George Lansbury (1931-35), after James Callaghan and Neil Kinnock, to have had a working class background. So if he is prejudiced against Rayner's background, he is prejudiced against his own. That is possible, but it is a different question. When the Parliamentary Labour Party had a much higher proportion of politicians who, in the past, had undertaken manual occupations the Party, for almost thirty years, had two leaders (Clement Attlee and Hugh Gaitskell) who were public school educated. One of Labour's best Chancellors of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, was a rich hereditary baronet. Of course, many things have changed since then, including the decline of deference, but when you look at Alexander de Pfeffel, and the support which he appears to enjoy, the question has to be asked: has deference entirely disappeared ?

The preoccupation with class in the PLP derives from the awkward facts that there are no very few MPs who have had manual occupations ; that the industrial trade unions, which provided a steady of stream of recruits to the PLP, have decayed ; and that the institutional links between the Labour Party and the working class (which has undergone immense social and economic change) have weakened. It is by paying attention to these facts, rather than by obsessing with the class origins of its leadership, that the Labour Party can make progress.