Britain’s upper class is now too snobbish to speak its name

Last week, YouGov conducted a poll in which people were asked to judge how middle class the party leaders are. Ed Miliband was the winner, with 45 per cent deeming him ‘middle class’, compared with 39 per cent who thought him ‘upper class’. David Cameron was the clear loser. Only 15 per cent judged him ‘middle class’, against 77 per cent who thought him ‘upper class’. Cue much handwringing in the Conservative party about what the Prime Minister can do to appear less out of touch.

I don’t use the terms ‘winner’ and ‘loser’ loosely. Being perceived as upper class in contemporary Britain is the kiss of death, and not just in politics. In the same poll, YouGov asked people the question, ‘What class are you?’ Forty-six per cent said ‘working class’, 49 per cent ‘middle class’ and just 1 per cent ‘upper class’. I’m surprised the number was so high, frankly. I’ve been hobnobbing with society types for over 30 years — including dukes, billionaires and minor royals — and I’ve only ever heard one person describe themselves as upper class.

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To complicate matters, the person in question was, in fact, middle class. It’s become so unfashionable among the upper classes to be thought of as posh that anyone who identifies themselves as such is, almost by definition, not. These days, even calling yourself ‘upper middle class’ is taboo. George Orwell’s description of himself as ‘lower upper middle’ would be condemned as unacceptably self-aggrandising today. In the hall of mirrors that is the English class system, identifying yourself as ‘upper’ anything has become Non-U, with the paradoxical result that genuinely posh people are too snobbish to call themselves upper class. They don’t want to be thought of as ‘middle class’ in the pejorative, old-fashioned sense, so they call themselves ‘middle class’ in the new, deliberately vague sense.