An upper-middle-class former banker friend recently attended a Reform UK selection meeting for council candidates in a decaying southern coastal town. Although he is a man of the world who once worked on oil rigs and in a shoe shop, my banker friend professed himself ‘shocked’ by the standards of dress and deportment of the other would-be candidates. Naturally all were overweight and tattooed, and all were dressed in shorts, baseball caps and hooded tracksuit tops – the standard everyday uniform of most British men under the age of 60. They were, it is fair to say, an average representation of the male members of what was once called ‘the working class’.

The story reminded me of that classic TV sketch from the early 1960s. You know the one: a conveniently tall John Cleese in a bowler hat

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