Class is the real dividing line in British politics, but politicians only talk about the middle class. That will have to change
Visitors pose in James Turner Street, featured in Channel 4's Benefits Street, which kicked off with a Little Britain-style portrayal of unemployed claimants as criminals, scroungers and addicts. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for The Guardian
David Cameron's is a government of naked class interest. Its leading party is the political wing of the City of London. For all its Liberal Democrat fig leaves, it is waging war on the poor while slashing taxes for banks, corporate giants and the richest people in Britain. Its cuts have hit the most deprived, the disabled and women hardest.
In crucial ways – the scale of its attacks on social security, service privatisation and falling living standards for the majority – Cameron's coalition has outdone even Margaret Thatcher. Its austerity programme halted recovery for four years and has cut most people's real terms pay deeper and over a longer period than at any time since the 19th century. Wealth is being energetically redistributed up the income scale.
This is the government of foodbanks, payday loans and the bedroom tax. None of that is, of course, very popular. So to divert anger from the top to the bottom – from those who caused the economic crisis to its most deprived victims – Tory politicians and their allies have turned their fire on migrants and benefit claimants.
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