Source: The Conversation – UK
Inequality has been debated in British politics for decades, often with a reluctance to address class issues. Bridget Phillipson, the minister for women and equalities, thinks this needs to change. Announcing the government’s new class unit, she argued that Britain has been “squeamish about class for too long”.
Class has, of course, never disappeared from the policy agenda. But in recent decades it has largely been addressed through the language of social mobility: how do we help talented people from disadvantaged backgrounds climb the ladder?
Much of this work has been channelled through the Social Mobility Commission, an independent statutory advisory body that monitors social mobility and reports to parliament. The commission has produced some excellent research. However, a key weakness has been that while it can research, monitor and advise, it cannot compel government to act.
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The government now plans to abolish it and bring this work into the Office for Equality and Opportunity. The new class unit will focus on low-income families and disadvantaged communities, including inequalities in public services, health and employment, and help implement the socioeconomic duty requiring public bodies to consider disadvantage in major decisions.
There are good reasons to welcome this.
Much of the wider equality and diversity agenda has become organised around identities such as race, gender, disability and sexuality. These inequalities matter enormously. But the emphasis has often been, in political theorist Nancy Fraser’s words, on recognition – representation, voice and status – rather than redistribution of material resources. That emphasis has also sat relatively comfortably within a neoliberal system built on deep economic inequalities: who occupies privileged positions may change without challenging the concentration of wealth and power at the top.
There are similar limitations in the way class has been addressed through social mobility. Despite decades of policy attention, mobility itself has barely improved: recent research finds no recovery in intergenerational income mobility among younger people. Individual programmes may help some people, but they can also make unequal systems look fairer – legitimising the status quo rather than transforming it.
In research with colleagues, we mapped more than 100 charities and non-profit organisations promoting social mobility. Many do valuable work, but we found that structural diagnoses often coexist with highly individualised interventions, producing what experts call “symbolic reform without redistributive transformation”.
One of us (Louise Ashley) has written a book called Highly Discriminating which highlights a similar pattern in elite professions. Social mobility programmes often helped less privileged entrants acquire the confidence, networks and cultural knowledge needed to navigate elite organisations, rather than changing those organisations themselves.
The paradox is that such programmes can make unequal institutions appear fairer by demonstrating that routes upwards exist, while leaving the distribution of advantage largely intact.
Phillipson has recognised this problem. Giving evidence to the House of Commons women and equalities committee in June, she contrasted “social mobility” with “structural disadvantage”, warning that mobility can mean that “just a lucky few get lifted out” while little changes for the vast majority.
That is why replacing a Social Mobility Commission with a class unit could matter.
Social mobility asks who moves upwards. A more material politics of class asks how inequality itself is produced.
The new emphasis could broaden the conversation beyond access to universities or elite professions towards wages, work, housing, health, public services and economic security. It could also connect issues often treated separately: children’s outcomes, poverty, labour-market regulation and health inequalities.
That would not necessarily amount to a radically redistributive turn. But it could make questions of income, wealth, work and power more difficult to sideline.
It does though raise another question: what does government actually mean by class?
Phillipson’s recent interview with the BBC is revealing. When pressed on its meaning, her answer centred heavily on income and economic disadvantage.
That has practical attractions: income is measurable and closely connected to poverty. But class also captures the other ways advantage is reproduced through occupation, wealth, employment security, family resources and access to power. Raising incomes may alleviate hardship without necessarily changing those underlying inequalities.
Politically risky
There are other risks.
The government’s formal announcement of the class unit refers broadly to “working-class people”, “low-income families” and “disadvantaged communities”.
Elsewhere, however, Phillipson has used quite different language. In June, she said that “for the first time in a long time, white working-class children have a government that will fight for them”. She has also described white working-class children, particularly boys, as among the lowest attainers.
Those outcomes clearly deserve attention. But class disadvantage is not confined to any one ethnic group.
Making the “white working class” emblematic of class disadvantage is therefore politically risky. For Labour, the language may signal a return to workers, wages and communities damaged by de-industrialisation. But it also echoes claims that poorer white people were forgotten while progressive politics became preoccupied with minority identities.
Many communities have good reason to feel neglected after years of insecure work, weak public services and widening inequality. But poor white people have not been impoverished because governments became more concerned about racial issues. Minority ethnic workers did not cause insecure employment, low wages or deteriorating public services.
Encouraging disadvantaged groups to compete over who has been neglected most risks turning people with similar material interests into rivals. That is not a revival of class politics. It can become divide and rule.
The class unit could mark a welcome shift towards a more material understanding of inequality. But it would be deeply problematic if this new approach simply created sharper divisions between disadvantaged groups. The important test is whether it helps government understand the roots of inequality more clearly and translate that understanding into better outcomes for people across society.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/09/16/uk-governments-new-class-unit-promises-to-tackle-inequalities-but-its-a-risky-strategy/