Who are the working class nowadays anyway?
Good point. It's more a question of largely closed communities rather than individuals. It's homongenous towns rather than cosmopolitan big cities, post-industrial communties that depended on one now dead or dying industry but also places like Peterborough where they do a bit of everything. Can be quite ethnically mixed, like in Pboro where the Pakistanis complain without a trace of irony about the East Europeans coming over here, etc. Few graduates, almost none amongst the elders. They view the welfare state as their birthright because of generations of paying in and resent incomers getting it from Day One, a strong British sense of waiting your turn and fairness, the apoplectic rage over Polish mums sending child benefit home, which has zero impact macroeconomically, but it's not fair.
The kids may be able to head off to the big city and persue opportunities but the parents are stuck where they are and have an expectation that the opportunities ought to be brought to them when they can't afford to move anywhere else.
And yes, a bit xenophobic. It's emotion-driven. The arguments are cobbled together post-facto to justify the rage and often make no sense. You can point out that immigrants are net taxpayers and take out less than they pay in, you can try the Corbyn line that it's not the immigrants' fault there are no houses, full classrooms and endless waits to see the doctor. All this is true. But it's not the point. These people feel neglected and taken for granted, and a Labour Party with fewer senior figures that sound like them alienates them. An accent like Wrong-Daily isn't enough. Jess Phillips, I bloody love Jess Phillips, is proper working class. As the people's poet laureate Paul Heaton once wrote: Too many Florence Nightingales, not enough Robin Hoods.