Apparently Gordon Brown has been on the side of the middle class all along. I am kicking myself for having missed it, but I must confess that I was fooled by Labour's tax hikes, their clumsy social engineering and the scorn that they attach to middle class values of responsibility and achievement. Brown's thesis appears to be that because some of the benefits that he has created apply for people on relatively high incomes then he must be their friend. I hope he believes this, because no-one else will.
Labour has vastly increased the tax burden on the the middle class and giving some people a pittance back is not any kind of compensation. They have changed the criminal justice system so that the police are incentivised to chase generally law-abiding people for fixed penalties over catching actual criminals and they have rigged the education system to try and stop the children of middle class parents getting to university, regardless of their academic achievements. The last really sums up their world-view, and how far it departs from middle class values of aspiration and achievement through hard work and talent. Instead of raising educational standards and creating a system where the most able from any background can succeed, Labour's method links progression to university with parental background, with the middle class losing out of course. No wonder social mobility, for all classes, has collapsed under Labour.
All I can say to Gordon Brown is that I know you don't like the middle class and you know that you don't like the middle class. Let us leave it at that shall we? Until the election at least.
