No caps in hand: miners in Bedlinog, South Wales, emerge from a five-day protest underground, October 1935. Photo by Horace Abrahams/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Labour’s problem is the numbers. In 1974, 65 per cent of the British electorate were working class (C2DE) and the remaining 35 per cent upper and middle (ABC1). In that year’s October general election, over 50 per cent of the working class voted Labour, against 19 per cent of the better off. By 2024, C2DEs made up around 43 per cent of the population, and only about a third of them voted Labour, whereas the middle and upper class accounted for 57 per cent – of whom 36 per cent were Labour voters. The decline of the working-class Labour vote is deeply concerning to the party but the substantial increase in its middle-class vote is necessary and proper – as long as it doesn’t strip Labour of what makes it Labour.…