Gordon Brown’s twisting and turning in his speech today on social mobility and the middle class shows that last week’s coup against him wasn’t such a farce after all. It actually succeeded in forcing him to change policy direction and left him isolated against a revival of the Blairite ultras. No more talk now of Labour investment versus Tory cuts, no more talk of a tax on bank profits (like Obama’s levy to recoup bail-out costs), nothing now about a ‘core vote strategy’ aimed to help working class voters. Now the talk is all about ‘an expanded middle class’, social mobilityis social justice, and “a genuine meritocracy”. The change of tone and policy focus is unmistakeable.
The Blairite Right in the Cabinet have snuffed out the first glimmerings of Labour social democracy that have emerged in the last few weeks for the first time in 12 years, and the emphasis is now back again on public spending cuts as the first priority, as both Mandelson and Darling have immediately made clear. It’s still a core vote strategy, but this time Middle England is the core vote which has always been Blairism in its purest form. If Labour goes down at the election, it won’t just be Brown who’s responsible; it will be the whole New Labour fixation on the better-off and indifference to the lower-income, struggling working class half of the population who have been forced to the conclusion that Labour doesn’t represent them any more.

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