For decades there has been a self-perpetuating belief that class is the primary divider in politics. When you think about this, it is actually a very negative idea. It says effectively, that the default for everyone is to vote according to their own self interest. I was struck by a comment in the discussion on Ellie Reeves elsewhere on this site that someone suggested that middle-class Labour activists simply saw it as a hobby. While I think this comment was not really meant totally seriously, it does highlight that many people still assume that we will all divide up along class and chose a party that would benefit us most.

But surely, the most core belief of the left is that we are not just all completly selfish and individualistic; that it is far better for us to work together for the benefit of all. There are often arguments that Labour could do well by shifting leftwards because of the number of working class people in this country. But to assume that people will vote for us just because they stand to benefit personally is to assume that those people don't have any kind of broader ideas about how they want society to be.

Equally, I believe that there is a strong argument to raise taxes on the wealthy, but I'm suspicious of a highly populist argument for this that because there are less of the wealthy, the many should exercise their vote and overwhelm them. This is a cynical view that implies it is impossible to ever convince those with money that stark inequality is a negative aspect to society.

Labour was of course founded to represent the working class, but we should be careful not to treat class issues as fundamentally different to those of say race or sex. The working class very much needed representation at the start of the century, and to a lesser degree still face many issues today that need specific attention. But we shouldn't assume that Labour must be the party "of the poor" and the Tories "of the wealthy" any more than we would expect men and women to split into two parties, each demanding changes to the tax system to benefit themselves.

The first stage of fairness is to prevent any group being discriminated against or exploited. The next is not for that group to try to assert further interests on selfish reasons, but to appeal to everyone with a positive vision of society.