This week I wanted to examine Labour’s apparent recent conversion to a ‘smaller steps’ approach to social mobility — as found in Keir Starmer’s recent July 2023 speech on ‘opportunity’. While the speech did not contain the phrase ‘social mobility’ (that absence being interesting in itself), part of what was accomplished by the speech was giving a Labour answer to the social mobility conundrum.
The speech did, on the surface, deliver a strong ‘smaller steps’ message. Describing himself as a son of a ‘tool-maker’ father, Starmer reflected critically on the ‘disrespect’ given to manual work, his father’s lack of ‘self-esteem’ due to this, and the ‘sharp elbows’ and ‘fear of failure’ that were part of the single-track competition for professional jobs. This part of the message was about upholding the value of career progression in blue-collar sectors.
However, what Starmer also tried to do, simultaneously, was deliver the conventional New Labour message about fair working-class access to the professions. Starmer attacked the ‘pervasive idea, a barrier in our collective minds, that narrows our ambitions for working class children and says, sometimes with subtlety, sometimes to your face: this isn’t for you.’
Social mobility was, in effect, proposed but in two directions: working-class children having access to academic pathways, plus the professional middle-class parent no longer viewing technical-vocational pathways as a stigmatised non-option for their children.
Arguably, while this may be a clever political strategy, it also seems incongruent as political philosophy. It is hard to genuinely explode the existing status hierarchy while simultaneously promoting the conventional idea of aspiration.
Ultimately, the crux of the matter is about status anxiety: The bourgeois squirearchy are not going to change their minds about what matters for as long as it is held up as a goal for those below them.
Reference
Starmer, K. (2023). Keir Starmer Unveils Labour’s Mission to Break Down Barriers to Opportunity at Every Stage. Labour Party, 6 July. Available from: https://labour.org.uk/press/keir-starmer-unveils-labours-mission-to-break-down-barriers-to-opportunity-at-every-stage [accessed 6 September 2023].
© 2023 Joseph Maslen