The outcome of this election depends on which man can seem more middle-class

Curious choice of words Gordon Brown used to describe himself when firing the starting gun for the general election. ‘I come from an ordinary middle-class family,’ he said. Until recently, ‘ordinary’ was used by Labour politicians as a euphemism for ‘working class’ and was often a way of differentiating themselves from their Conservative opponents who were, by implication, upper class. That was the tribal divide in British politics — never an accurate reflection of where each party drew its support, obviously, but a convenient social stereotype nonetheless. But here was Gordon Brown appealing to this stereotype while, at the same time, muddying the waters by claiming to be ‘middle class’. What’s going on?

The pundits reacted to Brown’s use of the words ‘middle class’ by pretending he hadn’t said them. In their parsing of his statement on the airwaves, they responded as if he’d described himself as coming from an ‘ordinary family’ and said this was a coded reference to David Cameron’s privileged background.