The toffs fight back

If you read only the Daily Mail, you would think the Labour government was taking the middle classes, like the mountain gorillas of Uganda, to the brink of extinction. ‘Middle Britain could be forgiven for feeling under siege from a government that remorselessly stakes new and higher claims on its income – while treating its children as some sort of privileged elite which must be put in its place,’ boohoos a Mail leading article.

Steady on. It is true that taxes have gone up, but the value of the housing stock has risen by much more. Interest rates – at 3.75 per cent – are at a historic low. Inheritance tax is crippling, but not if you can persuade your parents to contemplate what Carmela Soprano calls ‘estate planning’. If you were the firm sort of parent, you could tell your kid to pay his top-up fees himself via an interest-free student loan, and, unless you’re an employer, there’s no need to kick too hard against higher Nics.

Look at it this way: Berkshire lad Will Young as Pop Idol, a prime minister who went to Fettes, a prime minister’s wife who invests in buy-to-let property, a deputy prime minister who claims ‘we are all middle-class now’, a corn-fed chicken in every pot…. The truth is that we, the Boden-clad masses, are cracking open the Pouilly Fumé in triumph, because we’ve won again, especially when it comes to education, education, education.

There was a sticky moment, when Bristol appeared to be turning down sheaves of applications from straight-A all-rounders from private schools (it was, but only because there were ten applicants for every place). It wasn’t looking too good, either, when the Education Secretary Charles Clarke started talking about an Offtoff, someone to penalise admissions tutors who failed to offer places to candidates from ‘low participation postcodes’ over children with ‘academic pathway parents’.