Who will speak for the working class? Everyone, apart from the working class

It’s funny how the new left’s rule against speaking on behalf of groups to which you do not belong never applies to class. If a white man ventures his thoughts on the best way forward for Britain’s black community, he’ll suffer social death by a thousand tweets. Woe betide any bloke who holds forth on women’s issues. ‘Dude, let women speak for themselves,’ people will chide. Yet when it comes to the needs of working-class communities, everyone gets to have a say.

So last week, Newsnight featured a discussion about the crisis of working-class representation in the media between Owen Jones of the Guardian and Sarah Baxter of the Sunday Times. Newsnight, come on: you couldn’t find a single journalist from a working-class background? Or maybe you were worried they would spill their flasks of PG Tips on the Beeb’s settees. To have Jones explain — class-splain? — what must be done to help working-class writers is like inviting David Starkey to talk about how hard it is to be a Muslim in 21st-century Britain.

As a journalist who comes from the working classes, I have found the past week’s discussion about social class and the media incredibly frustrating. It is all a spin-off from Jeremy Corbyn’s speech at the Edinburgh television festival. Much of Corbyn’s speech felt chilling, a reminder of how much this old Labourite left despises the press — primarily because these leftists hold the press responsible for warping what they view as the putty-like brains of dim, poor Brits and making them do unspeakable things like vote for Margaret Thatcher or revolt against the EU.

Corbyn’s proposal to tax big-tech firms so that the government — his future government — might fund ‘independent’ public-interest journalism was a testament to his disdain for press freedom.