Who are the Working Class these days?

It has been, and still is, the Labour Party, which allows the Tories to hang on to power, because they still cling on to FPTP although they know it is undemocratic in the vain hope that eventually they will again gain a majority of MPS on the basis of a minority vote.

That ship has sailed thanks to the SNP. When I was growing up Scotland was Labour Party country where Labour votes were weighed, not counted.

The Labour Party .must now campaign for electoral reform or accept that, no matter how corrupt or incompetent they prove to be, the Tories will just remain in power.

Well being as we've ALL worked for what we now have I'd say that we're ALL working class, wouldn't you ?
Unless of course you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and didn't have to work----such as landed gentry.

52bright, remember that your husband married you, too . There is no reason why you should be defined by his occupation when you have one of your own, any more than he should (or shouldn't) be defined by yours.

I don't think that occupation is a reliable indicator of social class anyway. It was always the case that people with very different levels of intellectual ability have worked side by side - but in the past this was justified because clever people from poorer backgrounds were usually denied the opportunity to get qualifications, and they were not recognised as having potential. Consequently, it was easy to suggest that those with managerial roles were better suited to them because of their education and ability (class, if you like), but now that there are numerous graduates working in call centres alongside people with GCSEs, it is harder to maintain that fiction.

The notion that this is the first generation to 'do less well' than the previous one only applies to the lower end of the middle classes. The poor were never likely to do better, the rich will be fine anyway, and the comfortable/wealthy will be cushioned. It is the people in the middle, who, having benefitted from the first round of educational expansion, now see their position as a right.

Now that their gains are reducing as subsequent generations are also taking advantage of an expanding education sector, they belittle the achievements of the 'newcomers' and point to the fact that graduates now have to compete for the best jobs as evidence that expansion has gone too far. The genie is out of the bottle, though, and I doubt that the new generation of graduates will be happy to let their children just accept that they should take up low status employment, any more than the grammar school educated graduates of the first expansion did.

Covid will result in a shake-up of the labour market, and we will face even more job losses as a result of Brexit, particularly if there is no deal. Traditional class divisions may end up as secondary to the division between those with jobs and those without.

Up to a point, this happened in the 80s, when the loss of whole sectors resulted in job losses for everyone involved, whether they were managers or workers, and people who bought council houses at massive discounts had more disposable income than those who bought on the open market and had higher mortgages.

Again, the poor were hit hardest, as the better off got redundancy packages and had more opportunities, but the traditional fault lines shifted, and 'Loadsamoney' types did very well out of the demolition of the old structures. Who knows what we are facing now, and whether a party based on collective representation will be successful - it could fill a much-needed gap in the political market, or it could sink into oblivion. I think it is far too early to make predictions.