To not really know what a toolmaker is

[Gabbsters]

Well, I know what the words mean but Keir Starmer keeps saying it like it’s a well known job and I’ve never heard of it. What does it mean? Did he work in a hammer factory?

Exactly this. There are a lot of people out there who assume he's from the stereotypical privileged MP background and that can have a big impact on the way people vote.

A toolmaker is a man who sires, or a woman who gestates and births, an annoying politician

My dad was a toolmaker, he's retired in his late 60s now. I never entirely understood what it was he did in fairness! When he talked about stuff he was making it often seemed to be he was making the components of other machines and equipment that could then be used to make other things - literally "making tools". But also sometimes things as different as components of F1 racing cars or weird little widgets that fit into machines for making who knows what. He'd done an apprenticeship as a teenager, and it was skilled manual work, even with all the CAD and CAM and technology there is now.

Exactly. Its ridiculous. The 'working class' bit doesn't matter as much as he is an example of the aspirational skilled working class, came from a family where they really did have to make sacrifices (unlike both Rishi Sunak and Born in a manor house Jeremy Corbyn) His mother was very, very ill, so presumably needed carers and could not work, reducing the family income. They would have known what it was like to budget and not have enough money coming in. I agree the 'toolmaker' schtick is a bit tired, but he is an example of what a good state education and a supportive family can do for aspirational clever kids who aren't from a privileged background. Social mobility has been absolutely stagnant under the Tories. If KS was a child today, his chances of being PM in 40 would be far, far lower.

My husband is a toolmaker it's not a 17th century dark art.