The working class of England take their deracination completely for granted. Disenchantment is the happy code that informs every byway of the underclass: service jobs, celebrity dreams, Lotto wins, leisured poverty on pre-crunch credit cards, it's all there, part of the story of an English people whose grandparents never had it so good.
Building a country that worked for everyone was supposed to be about supporting ordinary working class families, which is exactly what Labour's plan to bring back the maintenance grant would do.
Working-class students more often lack the advice, guidance and support needed to navigate the tricky application process, whereas their wealthy peers at top public schools have admissions tutors to help their students game the system.
Our admissions system should be a vehicle for justice, but it is failing working-class students, especially those who are the first in their family to go to university.
You'd be surprised how many politicians have a working class background but they get it beaten out of them.
Admittedly, no Republican can get elected statewide in California anymore, but nor can what we think of as, nationally, the Democratic Party. There are no Joe Bidens running; it is not working-class Democrats vs. liberal Democrats, or whatever their division is these days. It is Hispanic Democrats vs. Asian Democrats.
I don't ever think of myself as coming from a particular class because my father was working class but made his living as a newspaper foreign correspondent - someone of no fixed abode, as he used to say - who was as comfortable dining with the Mountbattens in India as he was having a pint with the boys. He was very gregarious.
I'm from a working-class background, and I've experienced that worry of not having a job next week because the unions are going on strike.
I'm from a working-class background, and I've experienced that worry of not having a job next week because the unions are going on strike. I know that because I don't come from a wealthy background.
There's this working-class guilt - you don't want to be flashy.
