BBC Question Time: A surreal moment which displayed the English class system in all it's hypocritical finery.

After a couple of enjoyable hours watching Lewis, a TV series about a detective which is set in Oxford, a city that epitomizes the wretchedness of the UK’s class divide, I switched over to the BBC’s Question Time just in time to catch a surreal moment which displayed the English class system in all it's hypocritical finery. 

A member of the audience asked the following question.

“Is the Labour Party right to use class and the politics of envy in the run-up to the general election?”

The response from the panel was almost universal, the only exception was Margaret Beckett, who sat nervously hoping Scottie would beam her up, instead of replying ‘dam right it is.’ The only logical reply she could give as for decades in the House of Commons she was the victim of upper middle class louts, taunting her about her working class hobby of caravanning and talk of "Mrs Beckett is not top draw enough to represent the UK overseas."

The rest of the panel started pontificating from on high that in ‘modern Britain’ an oxymoron to be sure, class does not play any role, it is merit alone which allows people in this country to rise to the top.

Whilst the audience on hearing such crap were unsure whether to laugh or cry, not least because the panel in front of them, who supposedly make up part of the UK’s ruling political and media elite, were about as mediocre and second rate as it is possible to be.

However all was not lost, for a young working class woman from the north of Ireland stepped up to the mic, she was having none of the panels deceitful gobbledegook about the UK being a meritocracy, and exposed the cant of both Blue Labour and Cameron's nasty Tory blow back to the 19th Century. She pointed out only 8% of the UK population attend public schools, yet 50% of the students who attend Oxbridge come from those schools. She also made a very astute point when she said if Cameron is elected next year, both the UK and its Capital City would be governed by Old Etonian’s, whose life experiences have little in common with the majority of the UK’s population. 

To conclude, she pointed out one of the main reasons the upper middle classes are able to ring fence their children’s futures, is because most businesses today, whether they be media, commerce, the law or banking, (politics too) have a system in place where prior to employing graduates, they road test them as interns. These are unpaid posts, and thus are only available to those whose parents have the wealth to subsidize their kids after they finish university. In other words far from there being a level playing field for most working and lower middle class youngsters who have recently graduated, their half of the field resembles a rock torn, grass free, Sierra Leone soccer pitch, whilst the toffs half is like Wembley on Cup Final day.

So why did I regard this segment of Question Time surreal? It was because despite my young hero receiving the largest round of applause of the night, whilst the panelists and the odious David Dimbleby shifted uncomfortably in their seats; not one of them paused to consider when pontificating about class being outdate and the politics of envy, why and how they came to be sitting there. A quick google of the panelists might give one a clue, as we find  over half of the panel attended English public schools and went on to Oxbridge, and not a single member was educated in a local comprehensive, despite it being where the overwhelming majority of the UK’s population attend secondary school. 

The so called ‘independent’ chair David Dimbleby also attended a ‘major’ English public school and Oxbridge. Later in the programe after it was raised by grammar school boy Clive Anderson, Dimbleby attempted to put down as a jolly jape his membership of the Bullingdon Club, a socially exclusive student ‘dining’ society whose members have included David Cameron and members of his Tory shadow cabinet. It speaks volumes that this doyen of the BBC was unable to admit his membership of the Bullingdon Club for what it was, elitist social climbing and his first step in a life time of networking with the old school tie, which has enabled him to effortlessly climb the greasy pole, and for no better reason than he and his have the power and means to exclude a large part of the UK’s population from positions of power and influence. (Plus it seems from TV programs like Question Time.)

Is it any wonder one of the panelists suggested talking about class is “A very, very bad idea.” For people like her perhaps, but not for those of us who wish to see the stifling elitist English class system come crashing down.