In my parents' garage, amid moth-eaten sofas, dead lawn mowers and broken televisions, lies a canning machine.
George Bridges
Last Updated: 9:55AM GMT 20 Dec 2008
It was given to my great aunt, then a matriarch in the Women's Institute, by the Canadian Women's Institute in the dark days of 1940. This sisterly present was more than just a means of conserving the ubiquitous WI jam. It was about "making do", digging for victory, "waste not want not". It was part of the way that genteel, middle-class Britain responded in our hour of need, when its values were under threat.
Now those values are threatened again. Stable middle Britain is in the frontline of today's economic war. Those who saved and invested have been kicked in the financial solar plexus. Houses, shares, pensions – the nest eggs of millions of families have been crushed. And with them has gone ownership not just of things, but of chunks of one's life, like how to live in retirement, how to educate one's children.
The full weight of the economic blitz has yet to be felt. Unlike the 1980s, which was a manufacturing recession, this will be a David Brent recession, scything its way through managers and professionals. The bombs will fall on Slough, and across the South-East. Architects have already set up a "recovery task force". Even public relations companies are resorting to selling "recession PR" – a not so subtle way of saying "we're hurting too".
Middle Britain is adjusting to austerity. Retailers are "resetting" their business, repositioning their brands to appeal to yummy mummies turned bargain-hunters. Millions of people, many of whom have never experienced serious economic pain, are changing their habits. Why go to a restaurant when you can eat in? Why pay for a gym when you can run in a park? Why go to the cinema when you can watch TV? Why drive the car when you can go by bus? And as wallets shut, so do firms.
Some may put a brave face on all this. One argument is "the recession has a green lining": to save on energy bills, people will turn off lights and lag their lofts. They will dig for victory, renting allotments to grow their own food. There's the "we'll get to know Britain properly" line: foreign holidays are out, wet picnics on windswept beaches are in.
Some of this may be true, but I don't like being told "being poor is good for you". And these arguments miss the big picture. First, we are at the end of an era when people could dip into their pockets to protect the planet or help the Third World. As people turn up their financial collars against the economic chill, they are focusing once again on themselves. Of course they still care about others' suffering, but luxury political issues – the environment, overseas aid, the arts and so on – can't beat looking after number one.
And here's the rub: the state is not offering a helping hand to lead the middle classes back to self-reliance; instead it is getting a stranglehold on their lives. After a decade of Sisyphean labour, trying to push the state's rock out of their path, the middle class has once again been flattened by it, crushing their independence.
Consider education. Thousands thought, like Alastair Campbell, that too many state schools are bog standard, and scrimped and saved to send their children to private schools. Today, these are the parents most at risk of being called in for "a quiet word" with the boss. The upshot: 20 per cent of local authorities expect to see higher demand for state school places. Then there is private medical insurance, held by four million people: how many of their subscriptions will be scrapped? Likewise with private long-term care, which already cripples many families: a quarter of councils report increased demands for state-funded care.
You may say this is no bad thing. If the middle classes didn't evacuate their children from state schools and used the NHS, they might exert more pressure to get real change in these services. But you would not force a man back into a burning building in order to get the fire brigade to come quicker. So why should we have to risk children getting a bad education, or picking up an infection in hospital, in order to get change?
Yes, these trends might pass. As people grow richer, they will once again return to the private sector. What is more worrying is the growth in the state itself. Thanks to Gordon Brown, it is now the only growth industry. It employed 14,000 more people between June and September – while the private sector shrank by 128,000. Over the last year, the numbers employed in health, education and public services rose by 90,000, while the number in financial and business services fell by 112,000. For all its "efficiency drives", the state is a good employer and a bad sacker. How many of these will be jobs for life, complete with a pension – pumping up the public sector's pension liability of £1 trillion? And who is making the simple point that the more people work for the state, the fewer there are to create wealth to pay for it, and the higher the taxes they have to pay?
The middle classes have been milked to pay for Brown's boom. They will soon by mugged to pay for his bust. The question is how they will react. John Prescott, in one of his more eloquent moments, said: "We're all middle class now." If he's right, Gordon Brown should be very worried indeed.
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