The cultural significance of Ed Miliband’s mockney accent

I’m mildly posh – nowhere near David Cameron posh, for example, let alone the Olympian heights of Brian Sewell, but I’m unlikely to ever play a football hooligan or an East End gangster in a Guy Ritchie film. And I’m better spoken than I was as a teenager, when I used to affect a slight Mockney accent with a mild Jafaican inflection, as is the case with most Londoners born after about 1976. Not as bad as some of my contemporaries, but enough to sound like a bit of a berk.

One day, as our gang was walking down that notoriously deprived inner city street, Holland Park Avenue, I heard an almost comically plumy voice cry out: ‘Edward West! You were at my prep school!’  It could have been like the scene from Donnie Brasco where Joe Pistone is recognised by an old friend. There would be me, whispering to my old schoolmate as I beat him up: ‘Shut up! I’m undercover, I’m pretending to be working class!’ Instead I just mumbled something in my stupid-sounding urban patois, aware that he must have thought I was a complete prat.