Do you think that this country will have a working class PM?

[EddyF]

Do you think it’s possible and likely? someone who has gone to a bog-standard school; rented or grow up in council stock, or just someone who has lead a ordinary life like the majority in the U.K?

I don’t understand how people can only vote for the elite despite what the ordinary man and woman goes through in this country. The problems aren’t new with the NHS/benefit system/classism/immigration/no funding for society to actually run effectively. But they keep being voted in. Why? Twice this week people have told me they would rather vote Tories again as long as its not Labour. One with MH and can't get the proper help and the other one who is still working at senior age.

These issues haven’t just started and have been a sore point for a long time under the tories. Which begs the question, why do people vote for them? What vetted interest would the ordinary person have to vote the same party all of the time? It can’t just be about immigration ( what have the tories sorted out effectively regarding immagration?). I am not white but I have worked with white working class service users with very little in life but follow the rhetoric of the conservatives. Knowing damn well they will never reach the lifestyle of the party they're voting.

How did The Sun manage to get a large number of their readership to vote for tories? time and time again. First time might make sense as people desire change, but over and over again? Even if it is about immigration, don’t they have children and families who they can see struggle with these policies?

I get why businesses may vote the way they do, but the people in this country confuse me. Why not vote Conservative and if you're not happy with them in the next election, you don't touch them? why stick with them?

I was born in the U.K. My primary education was in France and we lived in the USA for some time. All childhood holidays in Africa mainly. With all of the faults with the American system (especially for non-white people/margainlised groups), it is more fluid in getting yourself out of poverty/access to social mobility.

All my International friends from Africa to the US are doing better than me, despite us all studying/holding same qualifications. It feels impossible buying a property here despite earning on paper a very decent salary and being a professional. My friends/family abroad all seem to own/build even if they earn less/same.

Once you're paying approx 2K in rent in London (yes you can move out but most people have family/work/community built there),how can you save for a significant deposit with rent, bills, car-note etc? wouldn't most government/policy makers want to help the youth in prosperity since the western world have essentially the systems to make a society less unfair/workable?

I am not saying everyone is poor in this country. It's just a lot of people are suffering needlessly due to mismanagementof the country where only a smaller number get to enjoy life like how it should be.

I actually think it's better to abstain voting than voting the same people/party that have communicated verbally and non-verbally that they do not give a fuck.

I was a young adult during the Thatcher years. The Tories didn't elect her because none of the men wanted to get their hands dirty. They thought she would win them the election and that she had the guts and drive to make tough decisions and move away from the centrist position under Heath, and she did. I loathed the woman, but she won three elections with large majorities, and divided the country in the process. The idea that she was some sort of useful idiot is laughable.

Major _ I had no idea! Very enlightening!

Tories wc /diversity / first Asian mp / woman!/ 1st women mp.

Macdonald, Thatcher, Major. Hopefully Starmer.

I dislike the use of ‘scum’, ‘snob’, etc in political debate. It weakens and cheapens the issues. If Rayner is ‘as sharp as a tack’ I’m surprised she hasn’t recognised that.

I wouldn’t put Starmer as WC

More MC

Yes the context of Rayners remark is now lost, it was said because Tory MPs voted to keep poorer children hungry, people like Billionaire Sunak.

Her remark was unwise, but it shows her passion and that she cares, seems her critics only care about points scoring and not the substance of the issue... hunger & poverty.

Its also a few years back and she apologised, despite this, Tory voters still wont forgive.......... let alone forget... desperate springs to mind.

True. Not sure why people are going on about how ‘sharp’ she is. I can’t say that’s evident

Surprising that you want to put down a woman who pregnant at 16, educated herself through evening classes and went on to become deputy leader of the Labour party.

Guess you think she slept her way to the top?

You alone typed it.

Your thoughts alone. Very poor

No need to add to the general rubbish about women.

I think this is your issue but I don't see much changing unless you reform your electoral system. I live in Ireland and I will say I don't for one minute think our politicians are much better than the UK but we do have a lot more parties to choose from. We have the usual big two Fianna Fail and Fianna Gael that are currently governing in a coalition but we also have other credible parties such as the Greens, labour, Sinn Fein, Social Democrats, People before Profit, Auntú and plethora of Independents which all have seats in government and create fierce opposition as a result.
With proportional representation it does create the need for coalitions but it also means parties have to work together to form governments make compromises and I do think it leads to a better mix of people governing from different backgrounds and ideologies as opposed to one ethos and one manifesto dictating decisions. You as a voter also feels your vote really does count for something. I would find extremely difficult to have to choose between just two possibly 3 parties

It's worth pointing out that no person from a working class background has ever won an election for Labour. None of Macdonald, Attlee, Wilson or Blair were working class.

I think you need to look at it in the round. There are about 20 ministers at Cabinet meetings; I would prefer a majority of those to be people with some experience of normal life / counting the pennies. We are more likely to get that with Labour although there are prominent Tories from poorer backgrounds e.g. Javed, Badenoch.

Why are you and others so keen to put down a woman who has achieved so much?
Simple enough question.

Very strange.

Also Edward Heath and Harold Wilson. Haven't RTFT so someone has probably mentioned them.

David Blunkett was a cabinet minister who came from every type of disadvantage. His father was killed in an industrial accident. He was brought up by his widowed mother in a council house. He was also blind. It could happen but the odds are stacked against people from a working class background. People are shallow and they don’t sound the part.

Wes Streeting MP, shadow Health minister, potential future Labour leader and therefore PM, grew up in a council flat in Tower Hamlets.

There have been several working class PMs as already mentioned. But what do you mean by not reflecting the people they're serving? The whole country is not working class. No PM is going to be of the same class as everybody in the country. If it matters.

The Prime Minister whose government arguably did most for working class people - Clement Attlee - was firmly upper middle class.

It doesn't matter who the PM is. The actual system is the problem, not the PM.

The social contract is fucked. The idea that someone working in a reasonable job, paying reasonable taxes for reasonable public services, would have enough left over to buy a reasonable home and live a reasonably good life.

That's just not happening anymore. We need a change of system, not a change of PM.

Government has become parasitic. The job of the government, civil servants, MP, PM, AGM, whatever you label them, their job is to work for US, to run the administration of the state as WE tell them. At some point that changed, now WE are being ruled over, we are treated as nothing more than cash cows to fund the vanity projects of the government. Whenever THEY arw short, WE are made to pay. And THEY don't care if we can afford it or not. They will waste billions, hundreds of billions of pounds of OUR money on stupid fucking train sets (HS2, bloody CrossRail) or literally give it away to countries that already have their own space programmes. They waste so much and then demand we give them more.

They are short, they give themselves a pay rise, we demand the same and are told that THEY can't afford it. We are being taken for mugs.

Unless the Government rolls back on itself, and starts to serve us, as opposed to using us, nothing will ever change.

Working class PM or not.

It's much harder for truly working class children to get to the top because they no longer have the grammar school route - where there are grammars, they are very much colonised by the savvy middle classes. I was a working class grammar school girl who went to a top university entirely because of the kind of school I was lucky enough to go to in the north of England. My grammar school wasn't elite as the remaining ones are (taking about 10%). It took 40% of the local children and there was great social diversity.

But whatever the origins of a potential PM, they need to be well-educated. Otherwise they just won't be able to hold their own in Parliament or on the world stage. Theoretically there shouldn't be a problem but I think being well-educated, confident and articulate is absolutely essential.

Haven't read the whole thread (sorry) but I would say that Margaret Thatcher and possibly John Major were lower middle class, if we're splitting hairs.

I think the problem is less a class one than a 'life experience' one. I don't want and MP or a PM who is 26, has done PPE at Oxford and then worked as a researcher for an MP for a couple of years and fancies having a go themselves. What releveant life-experience can they possibly bring? I want someone who's not been a career politician, but who's made a success of something (teaching, health, law, finance, public service, trade-union admin etc) and preferably had expeience of finding/buying a home, getting children into schools and using the NHS. Then I'll respect them, whatever their origins. And more so if they don't come from London!

See also: ethnic minorities

I've never voted Tory but it's pretty clear to me that their idea of "one of us" incorporates brown and female people in a way that the Labour hierarchy doesn't

As I get older I am getting more disillusioned with Labour. They talk the talk but they don't walk the walk.

I largely agree with you @onefinemess . But where would you draw the line between "vanity projects" and "much needed infrastructure investment"? More to the point, who is qualified to distinguish between the two? At the moment, those decisions are decided by the Treasury on the basis of (some fairly spurious IMO) value-adding criteria which tends to go in favour of the South East, and contrary to where investment is most needed.

I don’t care that she’s done any of these things. It doesn’t make her any better than someone who didn’t and got to the top.

She also leaked the flashing stories herself. Imagine her on the world stage, what an embarrassment.

This is really interesting. I have a colleague with a RP accent, and I’m convinced she gets treated differently. She is lovely, but everyone acts differently around her.
I have a ‘foreign’ accent and pretty sure I get treated differently because of it too

Can someone provide a clear definition of the working class? With the rise of non-traditional technical and manual labour jobs, including those in entrepreneurship, many individuals who are now earning over £50000-£250000 fall into this category. While some areas are experiencing economic growth, there has been a lack of wage growth for salaried employees, leading to challenges in certain regions.
Holiday sectors are booming, restaurants are full, and people are spending money.
I wouldn't trust a Labour government or an inexperienced unionised official to guide the country. Those ideas and ideals are old hat.

Margaret Thatcher's ideologies (greatly influenced by the values and political beliefs of her father who was a Conservative local councillor and mayor) were firmly lower middle class. She believed in a ferocious work ethic and the ceaseless desire for social and financial betterment. She literally encapsulated in one person the stereotypical English middle class woman of her generation. She was mocked quite unpleasantly by Michael Heseltine in an interview as part of a BBC documentary series about Thatcher and thus was very class based mockery. Though he in turn had been mocked (despite a wealthy, public school background) by I think Alan Clark as the 'sort of man who has to buy his own furniture.' Such are the minute gradations of our class system.