After the 1964 election of Harold Wilson all the way through to John Major in 1990, Britain was governed by prime ministers notable for their moderate upbringings. Our leaders, though in no way consistently working class, maintained a sense of ‘humbleness’ which mirrored the social composition of much of the electorate. Today, however, this moderacy has been lost, replaced by leaders of extreme wealth. 

It was Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair who first broke the succession of five state-school-educated prime ministers. Yet the starkest change with class in the cabinet has occurred very recently with the election of Rishi Sunak, the richest ever occupant of No.10. Previously an investment banker, Mr Sunak’s extreme wealth increased with his marriage to Akshata Murthy, heiress to a fortune of billions. The extent of her affluence has been ingrained into public memory since the outbreak of controversy surrounding her non-domiciled status in April 2022, meaning that she did not pay taxes on her income outside of Britain. Together, the couple’s combined wealth is approximately £730m – roughly double the estimated £300m-£350m wealth of King Charles III. It is perhaps unsurprising then, that Sunak has gained the nickname “Rich-i” from the public. Such a nickname is pejorative, a public expression of widespread disillusionment with the burgeoning chasm between leaders and the led. 

This divergence between the social profiles of government and citizens has been reinforced by the composition of Sunak’s cabinet, selected in October 2022.  According to The Sutton Trust, 61% of his inner circle went to private school – compared to around 7% of the country. This figure is shocking even by the usual standard of the Conservative party, with around 41% of current Tory MPs in the House of Commons being privately educated. 

It is difficult to reconcile such low levels of representation of working-class people within this government with the popular narrative that the Conservatives have replaced Labour as the party of the working class. Certainly in 2019, for the first time ever, more people on low incomes voted for the Conservative Party than for Labour, by a 15-point difference. However, recent survey data from October 2022 evidences how 64% of people believe the Conservative party to be “very close” with wealthy people. The prime minister as an individual appears to be a large part of this perspective, as 61% of respondents feel Sunak ‘badly’ understands the challenges of day-to-day life. His comments on the BBC show “Middle Classes: Their Rise & Sprawl”, in 2001, have certainly come back to haunt him, stating “I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper-class, I have friends who are working class – well, not working class”.

The public evidently sees a connection between the social background of their leaders, and their ability to deliver policy in the interests of the people. This is especially significant in the context of the current cost of living crisis. In October-November this year, 91% of adults in Britain reported an increase in their cost of living, making Sunak’s own levels of wealth appear even more disconcerting. Enough is Enough, a campaign against the government’s handling cost-of-living crisis, tweeted that a worker earning the median UK wage would have to work for 22,976 years to amass Sunak’s wealth. This imbalance has evidently influenced public opinion on government capacity, with only 37% of YouGov respondents trusting Sunak to make the ‘right decisions for the country’ during this crisis.

This issue of class representation, however, is not limited to Sunak’s government, nor the Conservative party. Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition, also does not present as a typical ‘man of the people’. His upbringing in Surrey, education at a selective grammar school and later the University of Oxford as well as his successful law career, have all contributed to an image that he is too middle class to represent workers interests. His authenticity as a Labour leader has frequently been questioned, often pejoratively referred to as ‘Sir Starmer’ by the media and political opponents. These accusations appear unfair when recognising how Starmer’s father worked in a factory while his mother was a nurse, yet they point to a wider issue. There has certainly been a sustained change in the social composition of the Labour Party, and long gone are the days of ‘working class hero’ leaders, the last probably being Neil Kinnock (1983–1987). In the 1920s when the Labour Party was first emerging as a competitive political force, at least 70% of its MPs came from working-class backgrounds. Today, that figure has dropped to an astonishingly low 8%. While there remain some stand out authentically working-class MPs, such as deputy leader Angela Rayner, the party has been increasingly dominated by middle-class politicians. The increasing distance between politicians and the people they seek to represent is an issue deeply ingrained in contemporary British politics, across the political spectrum. For millions of working-class people, this is not an abstract political debate, but a real deficiency of both symbolic and substantive representation.