David Cameron meets the hardworking people of Alden Group. Flickr/Andy Connolly. Some rights reserved.
Over the past few years, British politics has been plagued by two much-mocked terms. The first is “wealth creators”; the second, “hardworking people”. They are undoubtedly intensely irritating, especially when repeated endlessly by robotic politicians. But given the cynicism of contemporary electoral politics, it is highly doubtful such terminology would be used so profusely unless it had been first approved by legions of focus groups. They must appeal to someone. But to who? And why, and why now?
Political rhetoric is historically specific. It is as difficult to imagine any political party campaigning successfully in favour of “wealth creators” during the Keynesian-Fordist era, as it is to imagine one today explicitly promising, as Labour’s Clause IV once did, to secure “the common ownership of the means of production”.
