The phrase ‘white working class’ is a fiction – so why are the Tories obsessed with it? | Zoe Williams

The “white working class” is such a peculiar phrase, so widely deployed and so misleading. Of course there are white people who are working class, but the class as a whole is the most diverse of any group. This is a point made by a report from Class, the union-funded thinktank, on new attitudes to race and class in Britain. You cannot predefine the beliefs and values of a class, it says, and then filter for people whose whose views…