How the Middle Classes Ruined Britain, review: A confusing and hateful account of the class divide

The comedian Geoff Norcott’s first-person documentary takes a shot at the wealthy liberals he thinks are to blame for the country’s problems

Geoff Norcott is that rarest of creatures, a right-wing comedian. It’s not quite a contradiction in terms, but by the end of his passionate yet confusing and hateful account of the class divide in How The Middle Classes Ruined Britain (BBC2), I am none the wiser as to what he is on about.

According to Norcott, who hates Waitrose the way some people hate fascism, the hypocritical middle classes have gentrified working-class communities out of their homes, out of the best state schools, and even out of the mating game. The most convincing part of his first-person documentary is when he descends on a district in Wandsworth, south London, where none of the kids on the council estate, who live next door to the excellent Church of England primary school, actually go there nowadays, because, as the vicar/teacher attests, their parents can’t be bothered to go to church and pretend to be Christians, for the sake of securing their darling little child a place.

Father Martin gives eye witness evidence that parents he sees religiously turning up for services just stop worshipping a mere month after they’d made sure their brat got in and leapfrogged over the poorer children who live much nearer. He also manages to pin down a middle-class mum to confess to gaming the faith school system, though the credibility of her evidence is slightly compromised by her dark glasses and disguise, which make her look like an IRA man, and the voice distortion software, which makes her sound like Darth Vader.

Still, full marks for going out and about with a Havering local government officer to catch catchment cheats, and for confronting a drippy Lewisham Labour councillor named Joe Dromey about social housing. That name rings a bell, I thought, and I did wonder whether councillor Joe Dromey might be related to Jack Dromey MP and his partner, the Right Honourable Harriet Harman MP. Turns out he is, and, indeed along with his two siblings, was educated at a selective state school. For some reason, Norcott fails to mention this bit of class-related background.

With Norcott, you feel annoyed about the abuse of the system by middle-class parents, especially the lefty right-on types – but also less convinced than he is that this is really the problem. Quite apart from the private schools, which get barely a mention in this part of the film, there’s no sense that the country could actually make all of its comprehensive better than they are for the good of all – as has in fact been done in the past, and particularly dramatically in London.

Much the same goes for Norcott’s anger about gentrification, or “social cleansing” as its resistors style it, or “class cleansing” as Norcott terms it. For years, residents have been campaigning about the poor quality, system-built, unsafe, crime-ridden social housing thrown up in the immediate post-war years. Yet when a housing association or developer comes along to tear these modern slums down, the communities start to plead that they aren’t being listened to because they have become attached to these hell holes and their way of life is being destroyed against their will.

We can’t have it both ways. Besides, the rise of the middle classes, long term, isn’t because they are expelling the poor, but simply because the poor are becoming wealthier and better educated (ie middle class) and find that avocados can be quite tasty. One day there will be no genuinely working-class people left in Britain, so there will in fact be no-one left for the middle classes to sneer at and do down. I exaggerate to make the point, but you see what I mean I hope.

A disturbing, almost apartheid-style moment comes when Norcott subjects himself to some middle-class dating, including a failed attempt to find a hypothetical mate on a grotesque app called Toffee, reserved strictly to those privately educated. Then he finds himself buying a £16 cocktail and failing to fit in. But the chinless wonders and nice gels he’s surrounded by on a date night aren’t from the hypocritical lefty liberal metropolitan Corbynista elite he’s been banging on about, but the more traditional banker types, Conservatives in favour of enterprise, “lean benefits” and “competitive taxation”, just like he is.

Yet even though he would like to be like them, he isn’t, and never will be, even if he has money. As he puts it: “They probably teach this at private school, don’ they? Day one, collars and cuffs; then Latin; then nepotism."

Norcott does sound a bit contrived at times. I cannot believe that anyone could protest so much about being asked to smarten up and wear a plain white shirt for a date, and I’d hope that his line about Badminton Horse Trials being about horses playing badminton was actually a joke.

He left his most mixed up bit until last. Ambling towards the very belly of the beast, BBC New Broadcasting House, Norcott complains that “the very people who decide what I can say in this documentary are the same people I'm having a pop at”. Still, castigat ridendo mores, and all that.