The Middle

Hello and welcome to the Arts and Ideas podcast with me Anne Mikelvoy. As the hangover from our local and regional election results kicks in, and we look to a weekend of wild jubilation or elaborate excuses for getting a pasting at the ballot box. we might wonder what happened to the stolid British political middle, the place, it was so often said, where elections were won from.

Well, tell that to Nigel Farage or Zach Polanski, tearing up the old party system, and very much not in the murky middle of politics. Centrist dad and mum are still hardy perennials, though. So many TV sitcoms about this angsty breed. Who's not loving the BBC's send up of suburban middle folk, Amandaland?

So we thought we might take a break from the breathless aftermath of the vote and ask what the middle means more broadly right now. Is it still a place where happy to be, moderate, unextreme, comfortable, or a shrinking zone of influence? and as well as life in Middle England, we thought we'd look at middle age, and put upon middle management. Oh, and being middle brow.

To get us underway, then one of our number around this table, Catherine Carr, has written a book about siblings and what it means to be the middle child, as well as the eldest or the youngest. So as I introduce all of my guests I'm going to ask you to tell us where you sit in the birth order, and let's start with you, Catherine. You've written a a new book, Who's the Favourite? And that explores Interalia being a middle child and the relevance of birth order.

Theory and practice are you a middle, Charlie. I am a middle child, I'm a middle of three girls and the joke is really that I started a podcast about siblings and then wrote a book about it to finally get some attention. But by doing that I realise I've just added another thin layer to the strata of the stereotype.

You somewhat overfulfilled the plan to get a bit of attention on that one. Mark Lawson, author and broadcaster who has written novels and radio plays set in Middle England. Now I believe that you are a twin, so there's not much in it in your case.

Uh well it's important though. Um yeah, Catherine and I'm proudly wearing a firstborn energy badge that she gave me w without actually asking me rather alarmingly, but uh um I am the um I am the firstborn, but uh my sister followed twenty five minutes later. But those twenty five minutes do matter.

Ah, we might return to that actually. Simeon Brown is Channel Four's home affairs correspondent and author of a forthcoming book about the black middle class experience in Britain entitled The Good, the Black and the Bougie. Now where do you sit in the pecking order? I mean the birth order, but it can feel like that.

Well the the birth order is just it's just me apparently it's just me. I'm a only child, so according to the badge that I was given, that makes me the favourite by default. Um I don't know what that means, but I'm happy to find out. Well I can have a solidarity club with you on that'cause I'm o also an only. So we are first, last and middle.

With all the blessings and sometimes not of that. Adrian Waldridge, author and columnist and the global uh business columnist at Bloomberg Opinion. Now, where do you see? O list, boy. Oldest boy. Yes, with all the expectations and burdens that that brings. Permanently traumatized. And Claire Ainsley on the line from Toronto, former advisor to Keir Starmer. Interesting day for you, Claire. And now at the Progressive Policy Institute in the US. Now what about you? I'm the younger of two.

The younger of two. So I think we've got a pretty good spread there. And Catherine Carr, what is distinctive about being the middle child?

Well sort of nothing and that's the problem really. It's a sort of bereft of significance position in the family. That was how it was described by Alfred Adler, who was the nineteenth century psychoanalyst and um contemporary of Freud, who first sydd wedi'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i

sort of agreed with this, that they could be more pragmatic, a bit more cooperative, and able to form alliances easily with whoever is sort of convenient at the time. Against the common enemy of the parents, you say. Rydyn ni'n gwneud yn ymwneudol, yn ymwneudol, yn ymwneudol, yn ymwneudol, yn ymwneudol. Ah. No that's already a a set of qualities, but you could say stereotypes. And is it birth order then that's given rise to this kind of folk wisdom or or the other way round?

I mean that's the question, isn't it? I know we're going to get on to talk about popular culture and stuff, but I do feel like there's this call and response with stereotype and culture going

Mae'n ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud. doing this echo of stereotype and repeating it and repeating it. Yes. You're probably not going to get o off off the hook on that one. What so what about uh examples from literature again, as you say, that may be slightly cool in response that we spot them and say, Oh, that's a middle child syndrome but

It is there and it and even be before the example that you cited of of of putting a a tag on him. If we look at the other Bennett sister, which is quite a h looking at Mary Bennett, which is very charming actually and and quite fun and and thoughtful look at at Mary who you uh we only know because she delighted us long enough with with Jane Austen's very arch phrase. What do you make of of her as a a middle child and the literary treatment of middle children?

Well I think that's really interesting, and as Adrian said, he's the oldest boy, so I think gender does come into it. And obviously there was just girls, that was the whole problem for Mrs. Bennett, wasn't there, to marry them all off. But the expectation then was on Jane to make a good match and she was pretty, so that worked.

The heat's a bit off for Lizzie, in a way. She's a little bit freer to read her novels and yomp about the countryside. And Mary's overlooked. She doesn't uphold the family narrative at all. They don't think she's going to make a good match and save them all. Rydyn Cymru, mae'r bwysig yn ymwneud â phobl sydd â phobl sydd â phobl sydd â phobl sydd â phobl sydd â phobl sydd â phobl sydd â phobl sydd â phobl sydd â phobl sydd â phobl.

But your gender and your position in the family and the cultural expectation that sort of comes along with that. That tends to define the role that you then inhabit in the family. The firstborn is born into a adult environment and the second born is not. They're born into a family. When you get the third, you create a middle and that's when the fun and games.

Catherine, you you talk about the Austins and the Bennets. I was fascinated by the Brontes because we have this example where we think of them as three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, Anne, who actually appear pretty much to conform to the uh uh pattern suggested in your book. But in fact and it interests me this I mean pretty much now there are gestational disasters and uh children die, but people pretty much know their order in a family.

The Bronte, Charlotte, who we think of as the uh uh oldest, was the third of six, Emily was the fifth of sixth, and the sixth of sixth. Yeah. There was a boy in the middle who they very largely forgot as is shown in the dramas. Um But she'd had Charlotte had two sisters who had died before her. Now I'm fascinated by the psychology of that. If you're Practically you're the first, but you're not.

I think that's really interesting and I write a lot in the book about a family systems theory, this idea that we're a constellation like a baby's mobile, that what we're all joined and if you sort of touch one, that change changes everybody else. But the system really only makes sense when you're together.

And when you've so I I guess when the Brontes were together they understood exactly there were two or three daughters before the or babies before that had died. But interestingly in research that's done more recently If the oldest child dies, for example, and some research has shown that eldest children tend to earn a bit more or are a bit more ambitious, the second born then steps into their shoes and performs exactly like a stereotypical firstborn. Yeah. Exactly.

So he just took on all of the people. That's a big burden, ca you know, carrying on the family narrative, yeah. So Mark you mentioned that even the those twenty five minutes between you and and your twin sister had made made a a difference. Is there any research on the middle and the middle triplets, I suppose Well, I wondered about triplets because so if your um is uh my mother luckily avoided that, she just had twins, but if if you have triplets do they conform?

I expect they do, but I'll give you a fact to take away, Mark, and that's in that in the Netherlands the oldest twin is the one who stays in longer because their first responsible job is to push the baby out and get them safely into the world. So if you were born in Holland

you'd actually be the baby. But with I mean, th with sibling research generally, it's mainly done with dyads, so pairs of siblings, because it becomes very, very difficult with all of the other sort of environmental factors swelling around a family to sort out meaningful research if you have seven children or something. So triplets I don't know, but I bet it matters.

So it's amazing we're gonna talk about literature a lot tonight, but it's amazing how solid the patterns are because um you love Russian literature and Chekhov's three sisters, they do actually conform. Which we assume is because he had observed it in groups of three uh women.

Yes, and there are things about let's say take a three. The first is born, as I said, into an adult environment. They're then dethroned by the second, and the baby is never dethroned in their mother's affections. That's Freud through and through. These things Pretty obvious. I just wanted to bring in Claire Ainsley, as a bit of a gilwyd to throw at you. Claire Mellaby, having observed politicians for a lot of years, we often talk about them, where they're born, in the family, does it?

help create them and help create forge their ambitions. Have you observed anything about birth order in the politicians that that you've come across that's been significant? Well, I can't say that I asked many of them about their birth order, but I certainly think you'd probably get um Catherine might know, do you get more firstborns who are politicians? I certainly think

Narrative sorts. Narrative. Yeah. You certainly have a narrative of amongst many politicians, and actually Keir would talk actually really compellingly about his own family. So a lot of what he talked about his driver in politics. was about how his parents treated him.

uh alongside his sister, who's a social care worker, and his brother who uh had quite serious learning disabilities and sadly passed away uh a short while ago. So I wonder, Catherine, do you know anything about whether politicians are more likely to be firstborn? I think that the International Union of Middle Children, which does exist... Yeah.

They looked at a study about American presidents, which said 52% of them were firstborns or something. But when they dug into it, gender, as I said, plays a part. It wasn't true. It was that firstborn males were more likely to be American presidents.

But I mean look at the Milibands. Wasn't Ed Miliband one of the reasons given that he was the baby brother, so he couldn't possibly perform the role of Prime Minister? This idea that you remain vertical or hierarchical into middle age, as we'll discuss, is nonsense. But I think the argument having covered this in more detail than was good for me and actually having interviewed them for a piece where they agreed to be shot.

in the same pose was it was seen as more kind of well, you shouldn't really run against your older brother. I don't remember it being said as much the other way. You shouldn't stop your uh younger brother. Uh Simeon uh but you're covering politics sort of laterally in uh policy it is quite interesting, isn't it? We do make And I think we as only get it a bit as well. Don't you find people say to Oh, I knew you would be as if it was sort of what was it that I did or didn't do?

I mean I don't I don't know I feel like I am not a stereotypically you know only child. I don't feel like I'm a diva at all, you know, I feel like I'm very much a sharer of things, you know, I'm not selfish at all. people say as I pursued a career in T V. But um but yeah, no, you def you definitely do get it, um, the assumptions that you just get more care. But I guess with me as well, the challenging thing is I'm also or for a long time was the only grandchild.

So I got I got even more more love and resources. But yeah, I think I think order is very interesting. But when you were talking about a lot of those families, I was thinking of you know, the Jacksons because the greatest one wasn't the oldest, you know, it was one of the youngest. And I wanted to know how how much do you make sense of that?

I think you know, the research shows that the most harmonious families are where the personalities of the children allow for the hierarchy to sort of sit comfortably. So if you have quite a bossy older and a compliant second, let's say, that's quite comfortable. If you have a compliant and wishy washy firstborn and a bossy second born, that's when you can be in all sorts of trouble.

I I think the idea of family narrative is very strong as well. And in the case of the Jacksons and other families, like little women for example, there's this idea that they should all be good pilgrims and good women and conform to this one character ideal. I'm sure Joe Jackson had this idea that all the children were going to conform to this idea of the super performer. It just so happened that Michael perhaps was the most talented or went along with it. I don't know.

Let's look at another way of of being middle. And the songs around this table could be described as middle aged. Uh we could argue about where that begins and it ends. I find it just gets older with every passing year. Yeah. Um so yes, A Adrian, this sort of sense of of middle age gets a bit of a bad rap, doesn't it? This sort of idea that you w midlife is an attempt to make it sound kind of more market.

Well mid middle age starts much later than it used to, about forty five, and it goes on till about sixty five, I think. I mean everything's being pushed forward. But it it Yeah. It's always had a bad rap being middle aged. I mean it's it's not I don't think it's got any of the excitement of being young or any of the comforts of of being old. You're just the workhorse who goes and gets the money for the family and does does b rather boring things, watching football.

How much do we think this uh differs? You have a uh uh background writing uh about uh the economy but also political economy. This idea that kind of the middle and your your life is a is a curve and your earnings will somehow peak at a certain point and there's I mean even what you said there about you get exciting but you're free and you're free and easy and then you're getting old and you're gonna get respect and in the middle there's this big earnings chunk. But that's changing quite rapidly.

When you're still in the middle, you're not actually earning that much, you're paying off your your mortgage, you've got all these commitments, you've got children, you've got all of those sorts of things. It's only when you're about sixty odd that you suddenly start experiencing freedom, financial freedom.

Yeah. I one thing I I mentioned uh Amandalander. I don't know if anybody else has been watching. Yeah, of course I I guess Mark Lawson would be there in front of Amandalander. Midlife Mark middle status aware very middling preoccupations. Kitchens and bathrooms play a major role, right? Well she um at at the end of the first episode of this uh series she um is called middle aged and she gets very upset. Yeah. She gets very upset by it. Now she's also middle class.

Um and uh now, I don't want to do this now. Um it's also a middle brow show. And I'm using out in a positive way or get negative. You've now mentioned the... Trigger wheel. Well come well, we'll come to all of these, which is but with all of these middle terms, it only makes any sense if you know what the other two sides are. So middle age has spread because people used to die at sixty, so it was absurd to be middle aged at forty five or whatever.

But it's got completely mad, as Adrian tr uh was suggesting, I think. Uh there's a survey the other day asking when middle age ended. And people said sixty nine. Now how many people do you know? Who who lived to a hundred and thirty eight? Now how many people do you know who um and it even gets questionable in your sixties, I mean how many people lived to hundred and twenty? But it's been kind of pushed like that.

And then the other one uh which we probably won't time to discuss but I uh fascinated by is the Middle Ages. which people have stopped using and they now talk about the early modern era and so on. But um I was astonished to discover um in some emergency journalistic research that um Middle Ages was first used in the fifteenth and sixteenth century

century, but the significance of it is they thought they were in the middle. It was all tied up with the millennial cults, the idea that Christ would come back. Uh They they would have been astonished that we were talking about th them in twenty twenty six because they were convinced it would all be gone. They really thought they were in the middle of time and that's why they call themselves the Middle Ages.

Which reminds us to be in the middle, you have to have some sense of Yeah. But the the beginning in the end. And that that brings us uh horribly neatly to to politics and uh where our uh politics i is now uh settled when it comes to the the middle and the changing uh middle. So Adrian, Wildred, you're a keen watcher of this. We've got some of the results of uh yesterday's local elections, about quite a lot by now.

Uh the early indications about what's happening to England's political centre ground, which has had a bit of a crack a toe a moment really, hasn't it, in the last uh day or so? Your your thoughts, does this a sign that the middle is really collapsing in politics? I think all of the intellectual and emotional energy in politics these days is on the extremes, on the right and on the left. That's true in Britain, it's true right across the world.

and the middle is in a state of paralysis, it's in a state of guilt, it's in a state of atrophy, and it doesn't really know what to do about all this energy on on the two extremes and so it's tending to sort of uh retreat into a def defensive crouch and when I say that I point

to Mr Starmer, who might be defined as his defensive crouch. And I think really that's a very bad thing for politics because it's in the middle that's the best government policy comes from, and it's in the extremes that disaster comes from. And we really need to have a peculiar thing happening to the middle. The middle needs to not be a mushy set of compromises b between the extremes, but needs to have a very definite identity. And it needs whilst

the great thing about the middle is that it's a place of compromise and discussion. It also needs to have some values that it really sticks to and uh what believes in. I think the the the the values of mobility, growth Tolerance for um and political discussion are all things that we should be absolutely firm about. But I also think what the the middle has tended to do in recent years

is retreat from dealing with p with with difficult political problems, most obviously immigration. And so you get the weird thing that Keir Starmer does on the one hand, say this isn't a problem, it doesn't exist. Anybody who says it does exist as a racist and then talking, you know, in power light She direct quote for kids now. Let me give you a a direct question. middle middling, sensible, liberal solutions to big problems that both the Greens and and and and reform are pointing to.

So Claire, Ainsley, you advised uh Keir Starmer not so long ago, I think it was in twenty twenty two. Uh you stopped doing that, but you're still involved in that world of trying to define what a radical center would would look like. Do you share Adrian's analysis there that the the middle's just become sort of soggy, defensive. He pins it on on Kiss Dama, you may not.

Well, I do share the analysis in the sense that I think the centre has become almost the defence of the old order, and that is um a real ac mae'n ymwneud â'n ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r

what you're meant to be about should be about greater equality, about progress, about society moving forward. And as Adrian says, for me about mobility, but too often the s the sort of Centre and centre left has become sort of defenders of the status quo. So what you're seeing in this push to the extremes. on the outside and you're seeing this not just in uh the result we've had in the UK, but you're certainly seeing it in Germany and lots of parts of Europe, is this push

towards the extremes and in general that's not because there's this huge positive appetite out there for extreme answers. It's because of the failure of the center to come up with a change the status quo and I think part of that is because the centre is too comfortable. It's too comfortable with the way the order is now, with the lives that they live.

and the way that society is. And I think until that changes, I think the people are having their revolt on it, even if we don't like some of the answers they're coming up with. So heed the warning now,'cause it will get worse if we don't. And I'd also I'd also add that the the middle, so to speak, is also fragmented. So I think if you look at even the collapse in the popular culture that we consume, for example

There are thousands, millions of channels now. So once upon a time we would all kind of coalesce around maybe the BBC or the ITV or what have you. Now you might be consuming c content from various different places. Everyone's algorithm looks different.

And so the middle itself is going through a kind of reevaluation of itself because we're talking about lots of different groups who may agree on the values that you mentioned in discussion, in debate, in democracy, but actually when you get them in a room, they diverge in different directions. And so I don't think we would call these groups maybe extreme, but that disagre that disagreement that is kind of built into our uh public conversation now is a problem that everyone's facing.

Here's going next. Well I just wanted to say there's also a peculiar thing that's happened. There's a sort of extremism of the centre. The the centre that we have at the moment is a sort uh we we've had for the last thirty years is a sort of strange marriage between neoliberalism on economics.

and social liberalism on social things. And that all started out very sensible. Who wants telephones to be provided by the by British telecom when the private sector should do it better? But the people who argued for privatising British telecom then started only talking to each other and competing in more in more and more extreme views and said

Why not have a market in kidneys? Why not go and buy kidneys? And I think there's a sort and also with the social liberalism, gay marriage a wonderful thing, a piece of progress. But then you got people saying, Well why not just legalise marijuana or legalise heroin as the as the Greens seem to want to do? Or so there's a sort of became actually not only extreme in itself but became a way of ignoring certain problems, you know, d social disorder, drug addiction that

sort of the wrong thing to say to have doubts about it. That then drove reactions and now we're having a big This is part of what Claire was saying about the centre becoming disconnected from from regular people. It's sort of an like an inward looking group of uh of people who are doing well out of the current system.

But I'm very interested in what Hadrian and um Claire say about that, because uh those terms that we used in politics politics for a long time Middle England, Middle America. Middle America is still used a lot by politicians, Middle England less so. If you look them up in the Oxford English thing, Middle England is defined as the conservative heartlands of England. Middle America is defined as the conservative heartlands of America.

And I was fascinated by the idea that the centre was automatically conservative and with an implication of rather gentle conservatism. And that, as you say, is what has changed, Adrian. Um Carey, you wanted to come back in. I think the example that Adrian used of drugs and drug addiction I think is actually quite illustrative of the problem

Rydyn ni'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi'n mynd i chi

Um this argument about legalization, it it it only makes sense if you are a frankly middle class drug user who doesn't have the bad ends of Uh you know, really problem drug use. As soon as you apply apply a class lens to the problem of drugs, it takes you in a totally different direction. So I think it's right that the Green Party are challenged on some of this.

And given that they have gone for a kind of they're going for a bit more of a working class vote than they did used to and under this new leader, Zach Polansky, I think it's a really important challenge because actually it's problem drug use and the legalisation of drugs.

bydd yn fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n fwy'n mynd. and for people who are already vulnerable than it would be for middle class drug users who frankly want to um, you know, use drugs with impunity. And so therefore I think this kind of reconnection to class is part of how

I'm just going to say in my in fairness mood here in the chair, in terms of the green spots, I think one, I think they're going to take another look at it. Two, I mean they I think they are focused y you may think wrongly, uh Claire or Adrian on on harm reduction, right? I don't I don't think that it's just purely to sort of oblige uh wealthy those Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r tabloid, yw'n ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud.

Mart Lawson, you are brandishing middle march at the cross the table. Muck is a man who comes to every dinner party table, including this one with a No, I've I brought George Elliott's middle march because one of the great things about great culture is how the context changes it. And I it's astonishing to me this.

So middle march, um, it does what it says on the dust jacket. It is about the middle. Um George, the middle in politics, the middle in life, the middle of a family and aspirations and so on. George Elliot um lived in Coventry, uh which at the time was widely believed to be the geographical the absolute centre

of England. That has now been claimed, I think, by um Fanny Drayton in Leicestershire, I think they now claim to be. But at the time it was thought to be Coventry and she created a version of Coventry called Middlemark And in the book there is an election. The book is set in the run up to the eighteen thirty two Reform Act, although it was written forty years later. Um and there is an election in middle March and Mr Brook, Arthur Brook

Um, he decides that he's going to stand and he decides to stand for reform. And there's much debate in the book about um Well you've got to stand for reform and people say we don't believe in reform. What do you mean by reform? And this goes on and on. And so I was reading it this afternoon and um it's extraordinary. It is I mean it's it's the greatest English political novel, it might be the greatest English novel. But she was on to all that, um, George Elliot. And some people

It has many meanings as great books do. Some people say that it's a plea for moderation. It's sometimes taught in that way. It can be seen as a lament for moderation, which is how I would more see it, or the way she presents it. Uh because the major characters in the book, including Dorothea Brooke, they don't achieve the lives that they hope for or that readers would hope for.

And um you can s read the book is how I read it, which is that there's a kind of middling instinct that pulls peop particularly women then and women subsequently, that pulls them back to the middle. And it i there's so many applications of the word in this book. Um that you try as a woman to uh the way you uh get become safe is to get to the middle by marrying well.

I just wonder like you said the word middle so many times in that sentence. Thinking about what Simeon said and what you said about the Middle Ages, is there sort of a failure of language like adequate language now then to describe this sort of splintering middle class or the times that we live in. We just have this one big something word and we haven't even got ways to describe the centre ground anymore that seems to make sense in the environment that we're now experiencing. It's a...

It's a good point and the langu the word then fractures because you know, do you have this whole thing you must have friends who say, Oh no, no, we're um we're upper middle class and so you then go to upper middle class, low middle class The Middle Ages went to the early Middle Ages, the Middle Middle Ages and the Late Middle Ages and

Well I think it's like it's sort of rife with euphemism, isn't it? The whole middle of everything. You know, middle England is sort of humorous and sort of a bit rude sometimes and sort of stayed and a bit like No, no, it's a little more. Well, that's why we should go and get some good words from you.

The extraordinary thing about about George Elliot writing a book about the middle is whatever George Elliot was, it wasn't in any way middle. I mean she was an extraordinary exceptional woman with exceptional intellectual interests, so it's an odd thing for her to be focused. Though people kept trying her old family disown her family disowned her, people were always trying to And that's what the book can be seen as being about. And that's what happens to Dorothea.

But I think there are two fascinating things going on with the middle at the moment. One is this fragmentation which which Simeon talked about, th that you know, when I was growing up ev everybody knew the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and you defined yourself by where you stood in there.

uh whether you're a Beatles or a Stones person. And that's that's that that that's changed now, I think. I think I believe in in popular culture it's much more fragmented. I'm not a great great expert. But the other thing that's going on is that the middle is sinking. Uh y if you in w you when you were in the middle, the middle class was rising, you know, in the in in the middle of the year. Firties, fifties, they were all rising throughout history of their now we see the middle class Sinking.

Um and y y you see the middle class thinking and what is happening at the at the top is you've got this uh you know the billionaires, the millionaires and the rest of it's the top ten percent and then people in the middle are struggling and th a lot of them feel that they may well be going the same way.

as the the the the the precariat, the working class that has been driven into pre prec precarious I guess for me that that's the story of our time really. And so I mean, my book is about the black British middle class and it was almost as if this is a group who are late to the party. They become, I guess, middle class at a time when actually the middle class is has completely fallen apart in terms of

wealth in terms of influence, you have a huge concentration of power in this hands of a very narrow elite. And so it's about looking at so much I was interested in I guess What does the black British experience teach us about modern class in Britain? So what can we all learn about how it actually functions now? I think as you mentioned or alluded to was the research of um Michael Savage at LSC who finds Seven class groups now that fit within the old class system.

And I think that just the f just the breakdown of that promise once upon a time everyone was trying to make it into the middle classes via education. They were trying to make it via home ownership. They were trying to make it through all these means to feel like you know, they had a found some kind of comparative wealth. But actually what we've seen is, you know, students straddled with with huge amounts of debt. People unable to buy where it is that they where they grew up.

um you're seeing this kind of promise of being in the middle, not quite delivering now for a gen for generations. And certainly for younger groups in this country who are now realizing that via graduate education, they're like, well, hang on. Well. What am I now? Where where am I where am I trying to get it? What does this mean? Now it doesn't mean security.

I'm gonna stick with with you, um, Simeon because it you the book that you've researched by talking to a lot of of black professionals, detailed questions about their uh experience. So I'm just curious. Yeah, you've come to the that cover started with the conclusion, but what did you find that they were saying to you about their experience?

I I the the issue I guess that I encountered well that everybody encountered I guess is that uh you try and find people who are middle class and everyone's like, I'm not middle class. No-one wants to be middle-class. Even if they've been to private school, no, I'm not middle-class. So with black people, there's even an added element where it's like, oh, no, that's a white people thing. I'm not middle-class.

But I was keen to survey black professionals and I interviewed or surveyed thousands of black professionals because there was just an absence of data period.

If you're black you're assumed to be working class and with with good reason and there's a lot going on there. And what was interesting is that I guess I identified kind of three key groups. You have uh kind of emerging black middle class, people from working class backgrounds who I guess are merging into some kind of social, cultural, or economic capital that places them historically in the middle.

people from traditionally middle class homes who grew up maybe their parents are lawyers or doctors and they were usually a racial minority in a class group, in contrast to the emerging black middle class who are a class group within a racial group. And then I was interested in the black elite and these are people from

Elite backgrounds, elite families, maybe their parents or grandparents were instrumental in the founding of independent countries in Ghana or whatever, and then people who are self made, maybe like a Michaela Cole or a Stormzy or something of that nature.

And I mean, speaking to all these different groups, i it's really interesting because there were some trends around how people perceive themselves as kind of progressive, progressive values, but underneath that be more socially conservative in their kind of traditions. you had a group that are predominantly kind of female because of the better performance and education of black women. And you kind of had what I would also say is overtly

middle class ambitions that maybe your average Briton would be ashamed of. So seventy two percent said they want to send their kids to private school, for example. Something that was aspirational to them and they there was no kind of like embarrassment, do you know what I'm saying? It was like seen as something that was

So that was that was positive. And also what was also key was that London is a interesting London plays an interesting role in their in this in this formation of this class because It has propelled the emerging middle class because London's comparative success in comparive cap comparison to the rest of the country.

has boosted people from working class backgrounds here because of skins things like the London schools miracle, things like the access to good jobs whilst you can live at home. So whereas other places in the country, in the north or what have you London's London's growth had helped some of the people in the working class to propel themselves into careers. So that was an advantage for the black British middle class. But at the same time, the sheer expansion in house prices means that they can't

by where they grew up, for example. So it's an interesting dichotomy there. I mean that's an interesting challenge to what to what you were saying, Adrian, when you were talking about there's the the middle class that the the idea of the middle class is rising, rising. I mean then you were suggesting it is

has stopped now. But here you have a a really interesting group of people that's have been has been looking at we've just by virtue of immigration have sort of started on that journey into the middle class and their experience of it comes later than for for most of of White Britain. But at the same time after if you look at sort of Asian social mobility has been quite high in the UK. It tends to have been quite high I think in in the US and perhaps more more so than the uh African American

We have very different patterns because you do have, particularly in London, very, very successful um rising Asian people who rise to the middle class and and well above the middle class. But you also have people who are trapped. in uh a lot of the old mill towns and things like that, living in parallel societies. So again I think you have this extraordinary bifurcation, people moving up

um if they're lucky, if they're well educated, um and people moving down if um or remaining s uh static if they're not. But I think something worrying is going on. That is that the middle class The class that was supposed to be secure has been for a long time becoming threatened, becoming more precarious in its uh position. And now we have this huge wave of AI that's about to come and destroy a lot of

cognitively rich jobs. And so you're gonna see some you're gonna see uh big downward mobility for chunks of the middle class and throughout history downward mobility for the educated middle class has always spelt huge social disruption.

Uh Claire Einsley, how do you think th the the middle class is is defined now as just something something it's sort of said a along the way, which g you got a bit of a laugh. He was pointing out that a lot of black Britons don't like to to just be described as middle class or think it it might even be uh sort of seen as more of a a kind of a w a a white thing or a a white self description. But in terms of self identification.

And there is a bit of a disjuncture, isn't there, by how people see themselves and how they're then defined from the outside by posters or sociologists. I think you're a way to a conference this weekend with political strategists that have to know W what they're trying to shoot for here with the the demographic.

I mean are we sure o of ourselves when we say we're we are middle class, let's say that we don't mind uh saying that or that we're people who don't mind being described i in that way, are we even accurate about where it begins and and ends? What it is? Yeah, and it's interesting'cause the Americans talk much freely about the American middle class and they talk about that in positive aspirational terms, of it meaning economic security and opportunity.

Um whereas in Britain uh I think it was really interesting that the uh the surveys around the Great British class survey that Um Simeon just referred to that the LSE did actually with the with the BBC was really interesting because actually when you look at the way people describe themselves

they're still more likely if you push them to describe themselves as working rather than middle class. And that is, as you say, not necessarily about how you might objectively define them, which might be around occupation or income or combination of those things or

even as the LSE tried to do, looking at your sort of social and cultural capital. So it not just being about how much your house is worth or how much your job is worth, but also about what are your networks, what's your kind of social opportunities. So I think having defined That is better because for a long time I think you're politicians there was a bit of a

I remember this in the Gordon Brown period was a bit like you look for the median income and then you keep telling people who you newspapers more on the right of centre who are sort of endless going on about the woes of the middle class. You go no, no, that's not really the middle'cause

To be in the median you but you need to be on about thirty nine thousand a year. Do you think we've moved on from that as way of looking at people when you're thinking about how strategy works to rebuild uh th the middle of politics? Uh uh should we look at m uh money or does money not matter as much? I might throw that around the table a bit. So go on Claire. Rydyn ni'n llawer, mae'n llawer, mae'n llawer, mae'n llawer, mae'n llawer, mae'n llawer, mae'n llawer, mae'n llawer.

what we really found was that there was this sense uh that the voters that we were speaking to, which were kind of probably uh me me median to lower income. But they really felt like they had been totally forgotten about. They felt they weren't poor, they weren't rich, they described themselves as being in the middle, maybe not middle class.

But they certainly describe themselves as this missing middle, being forgotten politically, but also that economically they had this sense of being insecure in a way that really ten years ago you might have considered working class people to have there was much more of a sense that this sense of economic insecurity was really starting to affect people much further up the income spectrum in a way that I think is quite worrying for society and for politics and is fueling this push to the extremes.

Uh Simeon when when you were interviewing you know, black Britons and uh sort of rising professionals, do you think that money was the measure or not? So My approach was very simple. I go I'd go to people and say, I'm doing a book about the black British middle class. They say not interested in that middle class. I say, Okay, well you have to meet one of these three classifications.

One, you have to earn over the medium salary, the average income. If you earn above it, I'm afraid you're doing the survey. I said to them if you are a graduate, you're doing the survey and if you work in their profession, you're doing the survey. if you met one of those um barometers, I classified you as being worthy of kind of Being in the middle conversation.

And if you met all three of them, then you have no business not defining as middle class. I guess the the challenge is people don't feel wealthy, the middle has lost a lot of cultural capital, but fundamentally class is material. And even if you may not feel wealthy relatively to everybody else in the country, if you earn above the average and you have resources that other people do not currently have, then that does place you in a in a in a middle ground.

Simon, what interests me is that class can also be psychological. If we look at the history of the white working classes and um the late Dennis Potter wrote a lot about this, uh Lord Bragg of Wigton of this parish has written about it. Um, quite a a sense of psychological I mean, betrayal some people think, that you're leaving your area behind, you're leaving your family, clashes with the parents who feel you've been educated or you've uh be inadvertent comments better yourself beyond them.

Uh politician black politicians on the right who are told that they don't count anymore because they've gone to the wrong side. Did that come up, that s psychological problem of becoming middle class? Yeah, I mean I talk a great deal in my book about black conservatism and it's interesting because there is black conservatism and then there's conservatives who happen to be black and th there's a lots of different things that that that are going on in that space.

Fundamentally, we in this country have approached class as if it is a cultural identity when there are actually when there are actually cultural identities that fit into different class groups historically. But they sometimes can overlap different class boundaries'cause'cause materialism

materialism is the basis of o of class. And so when I kind of would interview people, I guess what the traditional black middle class and the emerging black middle class differed on was ultimately kind of culture and sensibility. So a lot of the people from traditional black middle class homes, I guess they would have grown up maybe with listening to today programme. You know, they would have grown up

you know, talking about the Brontes. They would have grown you know, they would be listening to this show possibly. But people in the black emergent middle class, their cultural sensibilities were slightly different. They might have grown up with grime music or they might have slightly different cultural reference points. And we're in a age where The hierarchy of Culture.

has slightly reevaluated itself right now. You now you now have to know as much about, you know, George Eliot as you do Love Island. You know what I'm saying? And if you don't then you're not cool. Simeon Simeon, how would Kemi Badanock fit into your your world, your scheme? I mean she she's just conventionally from tradition a traditionally middle class background. She's middle class and she grew up in Nigeria. She spent her life working in McDonald's. Yeah. But that...

Politicians gonna politic. I think that's that's a great example, right? I mean I when I looked at my I looked at the last parliament and we had The first black home secretary, the first black foreign secretary, the first black Chancellor, although let's not talk about that period. Um and what united them? They were all privately educated.

And so it was like a lot of the time then race obscures the conversation on class. And so when you begin to analyse the positions that people take and the politics that they arrive at class is very much like a a driver of those things I would say. And so unpicking class in the the black experience reveals so much. Even down to somewhat um um divergently. When BLM happened, the protest happened, I saw BLM as someone who...

Black Lives Matter. I saw that certainly in this country as almost an expression as well of the black emerging middle classes. Ambition. And the sense that, you know, uh if you look at the issues that it kinda coalesced around. In America it was about police brutality. Here it started off as that, but then the conversation was around

representation in media, it was about representation in in the boards. It was about very much middle class elite representation. But at a particular end, you know what I'm saying? And so it was about saying, you know, we're we're graduates And you know, we would like to have that to have that uh promise fulfilled. And so i it was an expression of as a class ambition and class expectation as well. So I th I I think that th those things are key.

Oh I just wondered listening to that Claire because you you mentioned class and a class lens, it wasn't a particular example that you gave. Do you think that politicians were f bit worried about talking about class and middle class? Now, it's not uh something that sits as far as I remember. Have we heard it really from for instance from the government? Didn't we have a Prime Minister don't we have a Prime Minister whose father was a tool man?

I do not know that She comes new to me as a political columnist It very in joke for those who don't uh follow Kirstama's every appearance that he does. Well yes, but he highlighted that as an example of respect he thought was uh lacking for his his father in that kind of profession, and then his own I guess a bit of a humble brag about his own. He was trying to sound less middle class though, wasn't he?

Well let just bring in Claire because she's look at this in quite a bit of detail. Sorry, I will come back to you, Catherine. Sorry. Everyone got very uh ex exercised now. Um this class lens, I was struck by the fact I was watching in in AOC uh the Quartet's uh But she really stood up for the fact that she thought the left needed to represent Ocasia Cortez, I get her name right, that needed to represent the middle class. But I feel British politicians sort of slip and slide around it.

Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd I find there's sort of th there's a kind of desire to channel a middle class. interest and voter base, but to do some things and go for some things that are reform. They're not the conventional Labour uh conservative way. So I mean where are we on class and politics?

Yeah, it i it is meddled up and I think actually uh yesterday's result does change the picture, I think, quite fundamentally in terms of who's representing working class people and areas and obviously uh Labour, literally it's in the name we're set up to represent uh working class people and that class structure changing is fundamentally why we are where we are in terms of Labour having moved.

away from that. And I think what's really important to understand is just that although the traditional working class that is associated with labour is much smaller than it was There is still very many social classes and there is still a very, very big working class. It just looks different and as similar as it's described in terms of the current modern contemporary middle class looks different.

Why politicians don't talk about it now is that I think it probably doesn't make sense to put the label of working class or even middle class onto your politics in a way that really has all sensitive

I'm gonna disagree with that just before I actually let my guests have a word I think we're seeing it come back. I think in Bridget Phillips and Lisa Nandy, I think we're seeing it on the so called soft left, which is to say I am from a working class background and then you sort of allied the fact that y you maybe went off to Oxbridge or worked as a law.

I I was just thinking there was also a massive regional question here, that reform in particular is speaking for the provinces against London and London is the the white elites and multicultural populations, a large group of people who are in the middle of the country as it were, who are in the provinces, who feel overlooked

And I think that the language again matters'cause I hear politicians talking about working people and I wonder who that is, because if you've got an increasingly precarious middle class who feel like they're working very hard not to achieve some of the markers of traditional yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n Yeah. middle class hard working people out.

What's coming out of this is people not want liking the middle word. People don't want to be called middle class. They don't want to be called middle aged. And then we then then we get to the one which uh don't get upset about this because I'm going to defend this word uh middle brow. Um now this is the cultural one. Um and people hate that word. Uh J. B. Priestley, the uh great northern uh writer, um he

did a radio talk and wrote an essay off the back of it, in which he defined the three brows. Now, um low brow low brow, middle brow, high brow, we it's it's based on the dodgy pseudo science of phrenology of measuring heads and so on. But those terms have stayed. JB Priestley defined them with reference to BBC radio stations. Um so Lowbrow was the light programme, now Radio two.

Highbrow was the third programme. Now Radio Three. Middlebrow was the home service. Now Radio Four. But before the Comptroller gets upset about this, JB Priestley spent his whole life defending the term Middle Brow. He said what it meant was popular culture and that's why people are um derisory about it. Um he said, Could we say broadbrow?

But even one of the fan sites for Priestley says unashamedly interesting word that unashamedly Middlebrow. JP Priestley was so they haven't quite got the message um that he sent them. But um middle brow Is is seen as an insult by people, but I tell you, if you were announcing the proms or the uh National Theatre's new season and a journalist said, Look, I can't decide I can call the season highbrow or middle brow.

Go for middle brow because you will make a lot more money. I mean a huge amount more money. Because middle brow to a lot of consumers, they think, Oh right, okay, I'm okay with that Whereas high brow is frightening. Sir David Attenborough, to whom we internally sing happy birthday today, he's being celebrated at the Royal Albert Hall a hundred today. Um he's an interesting example, high brown mind, um very intelligent, knows a lot about science, loves classical music.

culture, but a genius of middle brow television. Um and I again use middle brow as a compliment there.

We got it. Those shows work for a lot of people. Quite an interesting uh book which I think is called Born to Rule, which is done by a couple of LSE sociologists about um by b they did it by studying who's who. And what they demonstrated is it is it it's basically we've got a very static class system. The people at the top of the system

Uh roughly the same as they o used to be, but their who's who entrances have have changed. So you would say, I like Wagner, but I also like the Pet Chop boys. You you wouldn't have anybody in the middle. You'd have high culture and low culture. Simmons, but you Love Island and George Elliott. Which is my idea of a perfect evening. So you gotta have range at the kids' callage, you know what I'm saying?

You've got to have range and if you're in the middle you're pragmatic and you can ally with the Love Islanders or with the Wagners. I mean that's absolutely fine. That's the beauty of being in the middle.

I mean what about the increased representation of black middle class people in culture more more generally? I'm thinking of branding and advertising. That's not uncontroversial because there are Some people who say, Oh, hang on a minute, you know, this is a a certain and you know, they do it sort of numerically, there's a certain number of people in the society, but every ad that I watch now has got

uh got more black representation in it. Do you think it does create i impression of uh of change that's borne out by uh reality? And is it something that you welcome?

I think that black people are very visible in public life. You look at major pop culture, you look at our football team, you look at uh big exports in Hollywood you you know, you look at music, popular culture, black people are very much present in those spaces and so culturally you really feel that we're a seasoning in the national broth.

And I think that Britain culturally has changed, is why we're having this conversation. So I I I think that change is meaningful and I think that actually some of the voting patterns that we saw today, uh in many ways is a response to that change and a response to the changing face of the country and for some people that They're resistant to that. But I guess what my book also kind of captured was that that influence in culture doesn't necessarily mean that that.

power is there necessarily in other spheres. For example, there's an absence in uh corporate spaces particularly. There there's there's an absence in other spheres of influence. And so I think it's about uh the the balance of what does the visibility in public life actually mean in terms of decision making in in in the spheres that matter as well.

Yeah, I think this point on cultural identity is really, really important and I don't think we slightly cringily need our politicians to claim it in a way that feels like a little bit un unauthentic. ond mae'n rhaid i'n rhaid i'n rhaid i'n rhaid i'n rhaid i'n rhaid So many of the people that we spoke to in the research that I referred to in the international research

almost talked about their class disappearing. There was um a a woman in America who said there's like less of a legit middle class these days and what they were talking about was this sense of being Secure, then aspirational, wasn't even validated by society. So that kind of class identity was almost eroding. And I think it's both the economic insecurity that people are experiencing that we have to acknowledge.

But also the cultural identity of being in the middle and why it's important. So long celebrate Middle Brow, Middle England. Keeps an economy going. Forgive me for for just cutting you off o off there, Just, but I wanted to you to bring in uh Mark Lawson as the the the poet of the town of Middlebury, a kind of absolute apogee of Middle England. What kind of place or mentality? I mean just following off what Claire thinking it s was it to celebrate an idea of middleness that got you going on

Well yes, I read a couple of novels and many Radio Four plays set in Middlebury. Um I nicked it from Middlemarch actually, but I live um I live but I live in Northamptonshire and uh I moved there thirty years ago. And I had an absolutely clear and vivid sense of what Middle England meant, which I'd never had before. And we've talked about it in this discussion, but it's it's now changed.

hugely. And at that time it was I think my local Tory MP had a majority of about twenty eight thousand. And now um It would not be a huge surprise if um the area of the next election went to reform. So it's those changes um in it. But it's the idea that as in Middle America, as in Middle England, it was the place of safety that actually has become much more dangerous.

Uh Adrian's gonna be a br brief word from you, but can you really be you've written a lot about sort of radicalism and change. Can you be radical in the middle? I think we need to be radical in the middle. I just think it's it's it's necessary now that that that when you have so much energy

on the extremes and so much justified energy in a sense that people are angry with what the middle has become. We need to have a a a radical centre. I've just mentioned one more person, Aristotle. Aristotle we haven't mentioned Aristotle and the Golden And in the meantime, thanks to all my guests Simeon Brown, Claire Ainsley, Catherine Carr.

Mark Lawson and Adrian Wooldridge to our producer, Eliane Glazer. Mark's most recent book is The Allegations and Certain Guess Where Middlebury. Catherine's book, Who's the Favourite, is out now, and she also has a series on radio for about the experience of girls in Britain. Simmons book The Good, the Black and the Bougie will be out this summer. Listen out at the end of the month for another radio four show Siblings Unpicked, featuring brother and sister hosts.

Stephen and Anita Mangan. Next week on Free Thinking, Shada Bari and Guests will be taking care of themselves. Join them next Friday.