Insane question.
Nail on head. And I don’t usually say that to you.
The point is that the Labour Party is defunkt as a premise. We are a Conservative country now, whether that be because those working class people now see themselves as middle class, or aspire to be middle class, they vote in their droves for a party that will punish them (turkeys voting for Christmas and all that).
The Labour Party HAS to move to be middle to be relevant, and that’s what’s happening. This was recognised 25 years ago by Tony, and it worked. They’ve got to do it again or it will be Tories forever. This, and I’ve repeated this a thousand times on this forum, is why voting Corbyn in was such a disaster.
It has been the same since ancient times. Elites and plebs. If you don’t think a working class exists among the plebs, you’ve clearly not been abreast of those that have been keeping the lights on this past year.
It’s far more accurate to say there is no real middle class. The equestrians of Roman times are far closer to being working class than they are elite, to the point where the distinction really isn’t worth having.
Exactly the same thing as our middle class. It’s mostly a self-applied tag. These people are still three pay cheques away from oblivion, just like nearly everybody else.
Not sure I agree with the Equestrians being close to working class - You needed a minimum wealth of 100,000 denarii to qualify when the average wage for a legionary (definitely working class) was 225 denarii a year
Because the business activities of the senators was restricted by law, these guys were the businessmen - ancient mill owners, if you like.
Then you had six classes of commoner depending upon wealth - todays middle class would have sat in the second to fourth classes
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I said closer to the working class. That was true then and it is now.
It wasn’t - the equestrians were as close to the working class as Rees Mogg is today
They were filthy rich, it was hereditary and they were involved in politics
And yet, the gap between them and the elites was as large, if not larger.
That’s the point.
That a bit like saying Rees Mogg is working class because when you compare him to Jim Ratcliffe, he hasnt a pot to piss in
The equestrians were the Elite, just not the nobility
Let’s remember how we got here. @Sadoldgit was wondering if we still have a working class. We absolutely do, and just like the Romans, even that class is heavily stratified.
So let me repeat something I’ve said many times. If you need to work to live, you are working class. I don’t care what you call yourself.
I’m glad you lads are keeping it real. 
I was thinking to myself only the other day about the clear parallels between the Corbyn/Starmer situation and the ancient Roman equestrians. In fact, I was going to bring it up myself.
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I think the clear parallels are:-
- That there is an establishment
- That it is very resistant to change
- The so called levers of change are not really meant to change anything. Tribunes were tolerated before they got too uppity. Then they’d get murdered. Parliament is rarely an avenue for populist reform. We’ve seen the political assassination of Corbyn.
- The work is done by people who make almost nothing in comparison for those they’re doing the work for.
We really are nothing special, really are nothing new.
To quote BSG, “All of this has happened before and will happen again”.
Totally agree with that. If you work, you are working class.
I remember when Frank Skinner had Tony Blair on his chat show when he had been elected leader of the Labour Party, before he became PM. He was suggesting that he was working class, much to Skinner’s amusement. They went back and forth discussing what constituted being ‘working class’. Skinner asked Blair if he grew up with an outside toilet which completely threw him, you could see that he couldn’t even understand the concept. Frank told him that’s what being working class meant, remember Blair grew up in the 1950s. It was an absolute car crash for Blair, but very amusing to watch.
After the show Alistair Campbell, who was stood in the background during the show doing his Dennis Waterman impression as Blair’s minder, pleaded with Skinner to cut that bit out of the broadcast version, which, to his credit Skinner refused point blank to do.
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Which is why I think that Labour needs to split. I can’t see the two factions ever finding any common ground. The centrists need to join up with the LibDems and the left need to go their own way. This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if we had proportional representation, but with the current system a further divided opposition would only mean, as you say, a permanent Tory government.
It’s pretty depressing really.
A minority of people that work but don’t need to. I wouldn’t consider them working class.
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This is worth ten minutes of anyone’s time, very powerful words from this lady. Absolutely disgraceful that the new Labour regime have suspended her for holding these views. It just shows who is pulling their strings. Shameful.
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I don’t disagreeing with her at all tbh. It’s a very powerful message.
The jumping around of camera shots was a bit strange, it seemed as if what she was saying has been edited. Just saying.
I think it was an amateur set up from the look of it, filmed at different times and places. The intolerance of Jewish people who are deemed to have ‘the wrong sort of views’, on Palestine etc, by the current Labour Party top table is hypocritical and just plain wrong. IMO. They get no voice at all in the MSM, at least you would expect the Labour Party to give them one. But sadly not.
No, the background looked the same, that’s why I questioned it.
Regardless, I’ve lost faith with Labour. Briefly hung my flag on the Lib Dems. I’ll commit seppuku if made to vote Tory.
Suspect a lot of us are waiting for something genuinely new - none of the current shit show could govern their way out of a paper bag.
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