The short answer to this question is no, don’t be daft. Reform are the party of the elite, the leadership dominated by public schoolboys and inherited wealth. They have inherited many of the establishment networks of power, money and influence which sustained the Conservatives for over a century.
So why do I hear this so much on social media?
Before the General Election I wrote a blog about Sunderland in which I revealed a shocking fact. Seventeen of the twenty Premier League football teams play their home games in Labour constituencies.
The three who do not are Brighton and Hove Albion (Green Party), Arsenal and Aston Villa (Independent). This will not change next season as all of the top six clubs in the Championship play in Labour constituencies. In fact, only one of the ninety-two English Football League teams plays its home games in a Conservative constituency, and none in Reform seats. (Although one angry Reform voter insisted that Skegness played in the Premier League. Turns out he meant the South Lincolnshire Premier League. Division Two).
Football is not obviously “elite”, but Premier League clubs are markers of economic and cultural importance. They cluster around prosperous, successful urban areas.
If you did the same exercise with income tax you would get an almost identical result. Sixteen of the twenty parliamentary constituencies which pay the most income tax have Labour MPs. Three Lib Dems and one solitary Tory make up the rest. Reform MPs represent constituencies among the lowest contributors. To be fair, there are a few Labour seats at the bottom of the list too.
This does not mean that Reform constituencies are all poor. The typical Reform voter is probably closer to Hyacinth Bucket than Andy Capp; asset-rich, mortgage-free and often comfortably off. But many are retired, so the income tax take from those constituencies is relatively low even when residents are affluent. Another angry Reform voter took me to task with my description of Clacton, reminding me of the well-tended streets of bungalows full of elderly white people. It is not all Wetherspoons, mobility scooters and fruit machines.
Oddly, the same logic works for Michelin-starred restaurants. Of the nine restaurants in the UK with three Michelin stars, six are in Labour seats and three in Lib Dem ones. No Conservative or Reform seats at all. If you wonder why the Lib Dems do so well, it is because Bray, home to Heston Blumenthal’s restaurants, sits in a Lib Dem constituency, which distorts the picture somewhat.
The two Michelin-starred restaurants are all in Labour seats too, with only two exceptions: one Plaid Cymru and one Lib Dem.
Just to check that this was not a statistical fluke, I did the same maths with Russell Group universities. Of the twenty-four Russell Group universities, twenty-one are in Labour seats. The exceptions are Bristol (Green), Belfast (SDLP), and Warwick (Independent). The SDLP are basically the Northern Irish Labour Party, and Warwick’s MP, Zarah Sultana, only recently left Labour after falling out with Keir Starmer and he with Jeremy Corbyn.
The fifteen most prestigious art galleries and museums in the UK are all in Labour seats. The Condé Nast Gold List of hotels is the only category with more variety: six Labour, three Lib Dem, two Conservative and one SNP.
This is the British version of the “Big Sort” in the United States. Old Labour was the party of pits, factories, municipal socialism, trade unions and apprenticeships. If you look at Labour constituencies at the bottom of the income tax rankings, many still fit that model. But modern Labour geography is different: universities, public sector professionals, cultural institutions, cities and graduates.
Labour did not necessarily become more elitist. Britain changed, and Labour increasingly came to represent the places that benefited most from the post-industrial economy. The shift towards a graduate-heavy coalition reflects broader changes in the workplace. People who work and get on are increasingly graduates.
At the same time, the Conservatives have shifted from the party of business and the shires towards culturally populist, anti-metropolitan politics. Reform are competing for two different kinds of constituencies: former Tory seats where older voters think the Conservatives no longer reflect their values, and old Labour constituencies that feel left behind by economic change and alienated from metropolitan politics.
This also highlights some strategic problems for Labour. In metropolitan areas they are competing with the Lib Dems, and to a lesser extent the Greens. The Greens, in particular, might become a much bigger threat at the next General Election. But in poorer seats Labour are fighting Reform.
This might be a strange way to measure politics — Premier League football, Michelin stars, art galleries and luxury hotels — but it tells us something important about how Britain has changed. The geography of cultural capital increasingly overlaps with Labour Britain.
That does not mean Labour are “the elite”, but it may help explain why many voters increasingly see them that way.