Is Miliband posher than Cameron? And do we care?

I don't care about poshness Lily but some voters are very anti people they perceive as 'posh'. Very narrow minded in my view.

Aloofness is a different thing though. Anyone, whether posh or not, can be aloof. I wouldn't vote for anyone who appeared aloof, I vote for people who 'get' [or appear to get!] what it's like to be an ordinary person.

I am well aware that nobody can change the upbringing that they have had but I would prefer all politicians to have had a "proper" job before entering politics so that they have an idea of how the other half live. It is not their fault if they were born with silver spoons in their mouths. I rather like to see Boris travelling on a tube and although I could not stand the sight of him, Ken Livingstone did also so knew what the daily grind to work by public transport felt like.

" I vote for people who 'get' [or appear to get!] what it's like to be an ordinary person."

Yes... what IS that like?

I vote for those who care for ordinary people , if you think of the politicians who are mocked the most by the press and public they have lived ordinary lives before entering parliment

Personality is not a reason to avoid voting for someone but I do wish politicians would not try to make out that they understand what it is like to struggle with poverty. There is no way that anyone can envisage the desperation of those who cannot provide for their families, who don't know how to survive another day and who have lost any self-esteem that they might have once had. I have in the past gone without food so that my children could eat and I now volunteer in a foodbank and centre for people in those positions. I see the pain in their faces.
Oh and working as a business consultant or suchlike does not count as a 'proper' job.

feetlebaum

I vote for what I think a party's vision is.

I would like though, and think it ought to be mandatory, for every new politician to live with a person for a week, who is struggling in life, whether they are struggling with. Whether it is disability, poverty, additional needs, old age, health etc.
I think that it would open their eyes.

Feetle please come and stay with this ordinary family!

Right wing press sniping again. Oh well it will all stop after the election.

I am very concerned about the current trend for career politicians. The path seems to be from Public School to House of Commons Researcher via Oxbridge or Russell group. I am not an inverted snob, and dont think that anyone is too posh ( whatever that means), but I do think that we were better off with MPs who have worked for a living, even the barristers who made up the bulk of government when Thatcher, Major and Blair were in power, had an understanding of finding their own clients, paying their bills, sitting up until all hours preparing work etc. An no, Mr Cameron, you do not understand what juggling family life with two careers is like, your wife may work part time but she earns, on her own, about 6 times the average salary for a part time job.

soon no! Don't wish that on people who are already suffering. Haven't they enough to put up with already?

I think they should have had a proper job too. At least then they will have mixed with a variety of people and have a small idea of what matters to others.

It is impossible for any of us to understand how someone whose life is so different from our own feels or what their life is like. I cannot know what pressures a captain of industry feels any more than I can understand the pressure of poverty or disability. I can try, and do as I have been really hard up at times but never so poor I didn't know where the next meal would come from. To pretend to understand is wrong imo.

I'm a Grammar school educated grocers daughter. Does that make me an ordinary person?
I don't think you can define ordinary, we are all ordinary in our own social group. Whether we be politicians, doctors or un-skilled workers. It's all relative.
Crossing the divide is never easy for any of us.

That's a very scary photo of Ed!

I'm a Grammar school educated grocers daughter
I have a feeling of deja vu!

I remember when TB told us that he had 'slept on a park bench'

All Earthlings look ordinary to those of us from another planet.

TB also recalled watching a football player who had retired before he was born or some such nonsense. No doubt he was holding his "ordinary people's" mug of tea while telling this yarn to the assembled journalists.

The last labour government certainly had ordinary people MP's.

Not many, though.

Why are MPs extraordinary? I know many of them consider themselves special but does everyone else have to?

Really Ana, Mo Molam, Alan Johnson, John Prescott, Peter Hain, Dennis Skinner, Clair Short, Gordon Brown, Tom Watson, Frank Field, Dswn Primarolo, Angela Eagle and many more

I'm not sure I agree with your definition of 'ordinary', Anniebach in some of those cases, but in any event that government didn't win the last election.

Many of them are still there, Anniebach, and hopefully will be in the next government. There are a few from up north who have even worked down the pits,believe it or not!

I wouldn't expect any other sort of article from the Telegraph, a newspaper owned by people who do not pay taxes on the income because they live in Guernsey, a tax haven. What I am surprised at is the man who gave the interview.
Miliband is shy and thoughtful, and did not go to a public school before university.

Ana, Annie said the last labour government. She was correct.

Yes, and I said they didn't win the last election, also correct.

Perhaps shyness isn't the ideal quality for a would-be PM?

Better than a PR freak.