Bernard Ingham: The middle classes will send Brown into the wilderness

If you eliminate the aristocracy, the City's bloated plutocrats (most of them just well-heeled barrow boys), stoned pop stars, whoring soccer players and the shirkers exploiting the welfare state, that doesn't leave you with much of a working class. No wonder Gordon Brown has been weaned off toff-bashing and had himself programmed as Middle Britain's hero. All of this is as profound a shift in society as that recently detected by the official annual Social Attitudes survey which found that Britain, politically and socially, has become more conservative over the last two decades. If all this is true, Labour might as well run up the white flag now. There is no point in waiting for something to turn up by May 6. The wilderness beckons and pandering to the middle classes could conceivably only cast them deeper into it.

But what do we mean by the middle class? What defines a member of this tier in the hierarchy? Is it materialism – property, money, security from want, two cars in the double garage and another in the drive?

Is it lifestyle – a sober and responsible existence, generally within marriage, to go with physical comfort?

Is it aspiration? Our Prime Minister clearly thinks it might be because he has hilariously painted the very word on his election banner. Or is it a combination of all these things, but overwhelmingly an attitude of mind that governs an individual's concept of what he is on this planet for and how he should conduct himself while he is here?

If so, it has far less to do with material possessions than is

popularly believed.

That would explain why millions voted Tory for the first time to return Margaret Thatcher in 1983 and 1987. She appealed to their better,

constructive instincts and gave them something to shoot for.

The girl from the Grantham corner shop (followed in No 10 by the son of a trapeze artiste) rendered Labour's traditional class war irrelevant. Tony Blair recognised this but hadn't a clue what to replace it with. In the vacuum he left, Brown was always an unreconstructed class warrior under the skin but latterly has had to suppress his natural tendencies under orders for the Lord High Mandelson. Now, if YouGov and Social Attitudes have got it right, we are in a new ball game that the opinion polls showing a narrowing of the Tory lead have so far failed to pick up – namely that, whatever people say about the way they intend to vote, they are likely to have moved decisively away from Labour on grounds of class alone.

Let's put to one side, if you can, the financial crisis, the level of debt and unemployment and the scarcity of credit. Instead, let's look at what Labour (and often specifically Brown) have, or have not done, for those who see themselves as middle class whether by virtue of possessions, lifestyle, aspiration or attitude. In his very first budget Brown caused the damage that has shattered British pensions and with it the security of millions. Stupid.

Labour has done nothing for education. Worse still, it has used the system for class-based social engineering, dumbing down standards in state schools and attacking private schools that raise them. It is now proposing to make it harder and more expensive for so-called middle class kids to get into university. Stupid.

It has done nothing to encourage independence and discourage welfare dependency. It has cut British workers' wages through uncontrolled immigration. Even worse, Brown has sought at all times to buy votes by bloating the welfare state and the public payroll, thereby loading more burdens on to the enterprising. Stupid.

More generally, Labour has done nothing for the hard working, the responsible and the thrifty who pay their way in this world. It has taxed them stealthily – the hallmark of Brown budgets – yet has still ended up with an annual budget deficit of 178bn which the "middle class" will have to cover. Stupid. I could go on but would only add the moral outrage it has caused among the responsible by its deceits over Iraq. Stupid.

The moral of this story is that Gordon Brown would do better to appeal to the man on the moon than the middle class he now woos. We can only realistically conclude he is a looney – and stupid with it.