@ChrisMayLA6

I was struck by this:

"In the 1950s about 70% of manual workers voted Labour and the same percentage of non-manual workers voted Conservative. Today, education and age both predict voting affiliation better than class."

It is an example, I think, of the myopia of centrist or 'liberal' thinking. It misses the point that the current association of education and age with political affiliation comes out of the expansion of higher education in the 60s and 70s, then the generational inequality perpetrated by the single-generation handout of neoliberal privatisation, that has produced a society in the UK (and to some extent elsewhere) in which lots of well-educated young people don't have any assets to fall back on - which is really what being working class means - rather than having a regional accent or liking chips, as 'liberals' would have it - and lots of older people living longer that are less well educated but have both assets and relatively generous pensions.

What is 'social class' supposed to mean if not the difference between having no choice but to keep working all hours for somebody else, or conversely receiving unearned asset income ?

But naturally 'centrists', 'liberals', whatever you call them, must never see this, because if they did they would have to admit the economic interests (in preserving the status-quo) that really lie behind their own supposedly a-historical 'ideas' and 'values'.

@cstross

It's inherently conservative and often close to the right - and when politics polarises will generally side with the right - but whereas the centre doesn't really want change, is broadly content with existing relations of power and wealth, the right does want change - albeit often to go back to a less liberal real or imagined past when women, black people, etc, 'knew their place'.

@ChrisMayLA6