Middle Classholes - Introduction

The 50 Most Awful Middle Class People in Britain

MIDDLE CLASSHOLES

The 50 Most Awful Middle Class People in Britain

A guide to high-status people for low-status people

From Just Stop Oil to Led by Donkeys, from the madness of genderism to the immigration explosion, from anti-semitism to covering up for rape gangs because it’s just not ‘nice’ to notice …

The middle class have their mitts all over the desperate state we are in. The nice people, the kind people, who just want everything to be lovely, after all. So reasonable. Grown-up. The adults in the room. Can’t everyone just be compassionate and sensible?

Middle Classholes (at The Age Of Stupid Substack) is your guide to the top 50 worst of the bunch.

But first, some personal background.

Flashback

I used to love the middle class. I thought they were my people.

Not figuratively - literally. When I was a kid, I assumed that I was middle class. It was a terrible shock when I moved up, aged 12, to secondary school - one of the few remaining grammars in 1980, and it still is one - to discover that I wasn’t. Not even remotely. And that the actually very slight gradation between people on the council estate and people like my family in so-called ‘Spam Valley’ - well, it counted for less than a whisker to anybody else.

That’s me in the jeans, thinking I’m the lord of the manor

This illusion was woven, I think, because at primary school I was always being accused by other kids of being ‘posh’. I merely took them at their word. I think the confusion arose because I’d been socialised primarily by television; I spoke like they did on ‘Pebble Mill’ and ‘The Tomorrow People’ and ‘Blue Peter’.

On about my third day at the grammar, where I could feel my prepossession of the world slipping uncannily away from me, I returned home and confided in my parents. My new school chums seemed different, with different manners, with a different sense of humour that I didn’t quite understand. Why? ‘They’re middle class,’ I was told, ‘what did you expect?’

‘But we’re middle class, aren’t we?’ I stammered.

I can still hear the echoes of their derisive laughter, forty five years later.

But I quickly learned to love the middle class. I liked how they had the time and the inclination to talk about ideas, a generally greater level of willingness to concern themselves with - or at least not to instantly dismiss - the abstract, the unobvious, the not immediately germane.

I was a dreamy child, always thinking about something other than the matter in hand. Books and TV were far more real than reality to me. Such concerns were considered utterly pointless and rather suspicious in my own milieu, and despite my differentness, a lot of that foursquare both-feet-grounded attitude rubbed off on me. I still feel myself scoff when things start floating away abstrusely. ‘What’s that got to with the price of fish’ and ‘well that won’t put bread on the table’ are rational - in fact, vital - instincts, after all.

That will never leave me. I can enjoy the best of these things, but I’m never fully relaxed with them, even now. I can still feel my inner Rigsby from Rising Damp, hands on lower back, head tossed up, ‘myyy God’. That can limit you, yes, but it’s a good yardstick to possess, all told.

The middle class generally just seemed nicer. Less quick to judgement, more diffident, more civilised.

But I was now very aware that I wasn’t a part of their world either, and I couldn’t slip easily into it. I had been steeped in the basic and the broad. I soon realised that my background and my thinking wasn’t very different to that of my confreres back at the old school. I often found myself reflecting, when politics or art were discussed, ‘What are they talking about/are they mad/who cares/come off it.’ That hasn’t stopped either. In fact it’s got louder. In this century, despite my own life getting more middly, a lot louder.

But that’s more than enough about me. Relax, there won’t be any more.

Let’s zoom out for a wider view.

There was in 1980, in both the everyday culture and in the mass popular culture, still a certain amount of unstated, no-frills respect for the lower orders. And it was implicit, far from the conspicuous tedious ‘working people’ of today’s politicians. It would never have been called ‘respect’, or even noticed at all. It was just there, a part of things.

But then, gradually, middle class people (who were, in many respects, in their temperament and instincts much more like me) took over the place almost completely. What I can only describe as ‘BBC2-ness’ seemed first to seep out, and then in the 2010s burst its banks.

This was a bad thing.

And you can trace most bad things back to the middle class, or at least a certain section of the middle class. Not everyone bad is middle class, no, and not everyone middle class is bad. But in the group of rotters, the enablers of the terrible things that besiege us in the 2020s, they are very, very over- represented. Their twitching activity makes them more powerful. They positively pulsate with doing stuff - often not terribly productively. Their formerly fairly harmless boondoggling, their peculiar anti-Britishness, their superciliousness and diffidence - in the new century all have been amplified, unchallenged.

Here is a survey of 50 of their number - your cut-out-and-keep part-work guide to the worst of the lot. I aim to post a new ‘case file’ roughly once a week, with the aim of completing the set by the end of the year.

The 50 will be presented in no particular order, as it’s hard to stratify them, and I don’t want to start at the less irksome end.

I’ve chosen my 50 based on several criteria. They must be actively dangerous, or deleterious, or hilarious, or they must exemplify something. The information will almost always be public domain, but it hasn’t been assembled or presented in this way before. And there will be a certain lightness because that’s how I write, and because - well, we need a bit of that nowadays.

And I won’t dwell in detail on their background except where it’s relevant. But it is quite relevant, a lot of the time.

The Four Horsemen Of The Tweepocalypse

The Rules

Let’s have some prolepsis (answering possible objections before they are made).

Aspirational values are fine and generally a good thing.

Can I be accused of having a chip on my shoulder? I am hardly a class warrior, so I don’t think so. And ‘some of my best friends’, etc etc. I come not to bury the middle classholes, but to shake my head and stare balefully at them.

What am I using as a definition? Private schooling is one. (Though I see nothing wrong in fee-paying, independent schools.) There are inevitably grey areas. People whose parents were teachers or union execs feel middle class to me. And I think it’s not where you finish but where you start. So, for example, I think Paul McCartney is working class (though certainly his kids aren’t). So are ‘News Agent’ Lewis Goodall and Labour MP Paul Waugh, despite their pronounced middle classhole traits.

Vibes are not enough. Tom Baker is working class, as was Kenneth Williams. Jess Phillips is not.

It’s an equal opportunities list, 25 men and 25 women.

The 50 are all British. In a global media world I’m cutting my nose off here but I’m simply not qualified to make the relevant class judgements on foreigners. When JD Vance, very enjoyably, ‘schooled’ Rory Stewart recently the class difference didn’t even register to me until Julie Burchill pointed it out.

Some names will be more familiar than others. There are some middle classholes in the 50 that you’ll never have heard of, but who I earmarked in my files for further investigation. Some I have selected as exemplars of a particular strain, to avoid repetition. Collectives (such as our friends Led By Donkeys) count as 1.

There won’t be much sneering at tofu, quinoa, nice wine, etc. That path is too well worn. Okay, it might sometimes be irresistible - but the level must be high. (The Tuscan villa in the illustration up top here counts as necessary shorthand, and there’s no fun having rules and not breaking them occasionally.)

There are interesting stratifications within the classhole class too - there is no more vivid spite and resentment in Britain than that of the lower middle class for the upper middle class (and sometimes the middle middle class). The minor public schoolboy loathes the major public schoolboy. We’ll meet quite a few of them.

I want to lift you up, because there’s enough gloom. We will have fun, but there is a serious point - because these silly middle classholes have, as we shall see, led us to some very sinister outcomes.

So please join me - and subscribe for a knock-down price - as I unveil the Top 50 of this ruinous class of people, the middle classholes!

COMING SOON - Middle Classhole Number 1