To hell with middle-class self-pity. Let's hear it for the real coping classes

Oh those poor old middle classes. Day after day after weary day, our favourite paper bewails their woes. “Coping classes at breaking point”; “middle class hit by something or other (probably Socialist mortar bombs)”; it never rains but it pours for these poor people. They go under many names; the “coping classes” are what the last government called the “hard-working families”. To Ed Miliband they are the “squeezed middle”. I don’t like that; it reminds me too strongly of the process of putting my trousers on in the morning. To me they are the “poor sods who got conned into voting for a cabal of millionaires singing ‘We’re all in this together’”. Perhaps one should seek a neutral description: the Sober Married Unsubsidised Gentlefolk, for instance. At least it would provide a snappy acronym.

But let’s not sink into Schadenfreude. The idea of families at breaking point is not one that should be sneered at. There are lots of them up here in the North-West, for whom the recent glorious Indian summer was overshadowed by the looming seasonal debate: proper winter clothes for the kids or heating the house properly? But I somehow suspect these aren’t exactly the people referred to. Surely, many of our readers will say, that’s in the North! They’ve been like that for twenty-five years; surely they’ve got used to it by now. Now we, on the other hand....

They have a point. The jobs which consisted of spending all day in the factory or oop t’mill have indeed gone, with a little help from a certain lady; many of the jobs involving sitting in the office all day, looking out of the window and dreaming of house prices, have lasted a good deal longer. So it could be said that the coping classes have had an extra quarter of a century to put aside sheaves of corn for the lean years. And have they? ‘Ave they ‘eckers. They’ve borrowed themselves silly, admittedly following the Government’s example, and now the bills are coming in. A sense that a lot of these people have misjudged their real economic interests steals over me.

Politics is not, at bottom, about ideas and principles; much of that is froth on the surface. It’s about living and working conditions, and that comes down very simply to relative wealth. Margaret Thatcher united the rich and the middle classes, got some of the poor on board too, and won three elections. Tony Blair united the poor and the middle classes, got some of the rich on board too, and achieved the same. The Coalition stands or falls by persuading the “coping classes” to identify their interests with the “millionaires’ Cabinet”. That is why they have taken the risk of allowing the pain caused by reforms to pensions and child benefit to reach as far down as the £45,000 bracket; they need to keep convincing them that “we’re all in this together”.

I have got a bit sick of middle-class self-pity. Earning a living and paying one’s taxes makes one a decent citizen; it doesn’t make one a hero, saint and martyr. The real heroes and martyrs, if not necessarily saints, are simultaneously the real coping classes; those who are managing to hold things together, amid collapsing social services, a long way short of the top tax bracket. This is where a lot of the real entrepreneurial talent is emerging; this class don’t expect secure jobs and nice regular incomes any more. Yes, there’s some ducking and diving; the wheels of the downmarket coping strategy are occasionally greased with a bit of benefit-fiddling, as those of upmarket enterprise are sometimes greased by a bit of tax-dodging. But it’s really those of us on four- or five-figure incomes who are “all in this together”, and Mr Cameron must not be allowed to forget it.