Speaking in Hertfordshire today, Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed renewed questions about his leadership following internal Labour criticism and media speculation over cabinet stability. In what might be one of the most important statements of his premiership to date, Starmer opted to lean heavily into his working-class background, highlighting both his personal experiences and the composition of his team.

Starmer rose to power with the most state-educated, working-class cabinet in recent history, with over 90% of ministers having been educated in state schools — a marked contrast to the historically private-school-dominated leadership of previous governments. After appointing his first Cabinet in 2024, Starmer said he was “really proud of the fact that my Cabinet reflects the aspiration that I believe lies at the heart of our country.” He framed the educational background of his ministers as a source of pride, highlighting that many had “didn’t have the easiest of starts in life” and came from state schools.

Class Consciousness as Political Strategy

Starmer’s statement can be read in part as a response to a shifting electorate. Rising class consciousness has changed the dynamics of British politics: the working-class vote is no longer automatically aligned with one party, and these populations are increasingly being seen as a decisive political force. With his emphasis on his own upbringing and the struggles faced by his family, Starmer is acknowledging that to maintain political legitimacy — and to win elections — politicians must appeal directly to working-class voters and their lived experiences. This moment also underscores a reality: who gets listened to is changing. Working-class populations are now visible in a way they have not been in decades.

Starmer’s speech, seen by some commentators as a “Hail Mary,” signals an understanding that political success requires recognising the weight of working-class influence. Ignoring this demographic is no longer an option for any national leader. Keir Starmer’s statement in Hertfordshire is therefore more than a speech defending his leadership; it is a window into the rise of class consciousness in modern British politics. By centering his working-class background and the state-educated composition of his cabinet, Starmer – knowingly or unknowingly – is acknowledging a shift that has been building: the working class is a political force, an influencer of leadership legitimacy, and a critical lens through which policy and representation are now being judged.

Reform UK

Alluding to the rise of Reform UK in today’s statement, Starmer noted:

“The fight coming up in politics, the real fight is not in the Labour party. It’s with the right-wing politics that challenges that, the politics of Reform, the politics of divide, divide, divide, grievance, grievance, grievance.”

This nod to Reform UK in the wake of this class-conscious narrative is made all the more interesting by recent polling data, which shows that Reform UK are capitalising on class consciousness. Reform UK currently outperforms Labour among voters who attended state schools, with a More in Common poll showing that around 32–33% of state-educated voters said they would support Reform UK, compared with only 20% backing Labour. The figures are particularly striking when juxtaposed with the composition of Reform UK itself: approximately 80% of the party’s MPs are privately educated.

If Reform UK are taking the working-class vote on the Right, then it looks like the Greens are scooping it up on the Left

Another marker of rising class consciousness in British politics is the ascendancy of Zack Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party, who has sought to broaden the party’s appeal beyond its traditional base and speak directly to working‑class communities. Since winning party leadership with a decisive mandate earlier in 2025, Polanski has championed an “eco‑populist” agenda that combines environmental priorities with socioeconomic justice, arguing that political parties must listen to those struggling with inequality, insecure work, and the cost‑of‑living crisis rather than retreat into “briefcase politics.” Under his leadership, the Greens have emphasised policies aimed at taking on concentrated wealth, taxing the richest 1%, and amplifying voices from the poorest communities — including working‑class voters often overlooked by mainstream parties. Polanski has explicitly framed his approach as one that seeks to “listen to the most marginalised”.

It’s worth noting that Polanski, like Farage, was privately educated — albeit on a scholarship. This raises an interesting question: what is it about privately educated leaders that resonates with working-class voters? That, however, is a discussion for another piece.

The tide is turning

Historically, working-class populations have been excluded from positions of power, overlooked in decision-making, and underrepresented at the highest levels of government and institutions. That is changing.

The visibility of class in political rhetoric, cabinet composition, and public debate reflects a broader cultural shift: class consciousness is no longer dormant or muted, but active, measurable, and influential.

A shift is occurring, and it is happening before our very eyes. It’s increasingly looking like the next General Election will be fought on the battleground of class.

Politicians and parties can no longer ignore the lived realities of class, and working-class voices are emerging as a central axis in the negotiation of power, influence, and political success in the UK.

So, here’s the question. Now working-class communities have political capital… how shall we spend it?

When you’re first starting out, it genuinely makes you feel better.

It doesn’t matter that you’re stood in the drive-thru of your local McDonald’s, trying to put through someone’s no-pickle double cheeseburger with no-salt fries order, because you’re going places. The fact that the person ordering from you doesn’t know it yet only adds to the satisfaction.

If you’re at the front counter, you hope someone might make small talk with you – just so you can casually drop into conversation that this is just a stepping stone.

You’re going places.

For my entire life, I have been obsessed with the idea of going places. It has been a lifeline to me in some of my most difficult moments, and has become something of a manifesto for how I see my life.

So much so that, on my last day of sixth form, my head of year handed me a copy of Dr. Seuss’ Oh! The Places You’ll Go.

As the daughter of an alcoholic who was told she would never amount to anything, the idea of my future has been a constant source of sustenance.

The problem with being obsessed with the places you’re going is that you never allow them to actually exist.

As time moves, our concept of the future moves with it. And suddenly, before you know it, the future you dreamed of for years and years has arrived.

Except it’s no longer the future – it’s the present – and you don’t want it.

After all, your brain has been hardwired to believe that the present is never good enough. That all that’s worth having, all that’s worth being, exists in some future reality or version of ourselves that’s better than this one.

And, of course, every version of us that we conjure in the future is better than the last. Every time we meet ourselves in the places we dreamed of being, it becomes never good enough.

Last year was, objectively, one of the best years of my career to date. I advised the UK Government; I grew the social enterprise I founded from a handful of volunteers into a seven-figure organisation; I secured an agent for my book proposal; I gained 100,000+ followers; I interviewed one of the biggest authors in the world; I hosted events for thousands of people; I spoke on the radio; I got features in major publications; and I was invited to the King’s Garden Party.

The list looks exactly like I hoped it would, with so many surprises on top.

And yet, by the end of the year, I just felt… sad.

And, honestly, somewhat daunted by what next year’s version of me would need to look like in order not to regress.

As I sat down with next year’s bingo card, writing out a list of all the things I could achieve, it dawned on me that this might not make future me happy.

So I have to ask:

What happens when the places you’ve dreamed of going, the people you’ve dreamed of being, the ideas that have sustained you for so long, never really arrive?

For a long time, I thought the sadness meant I was ungrateful. That I was broken somehow. That other people must reach these milestones and feel permanently changed, permanently secure. I told myself to zoom out, to be more positive, to remember where I’d come from. But gratitude, I’ve learned, is not a cure for burnout. Perspective doesn’t magically rewire a nervous system that learned, very early on, that safety lives in the future and not in the present.

When you grow up without much – without stability, without reassurance, without being told you’re enough as you are – you learn to outsource your worth to outcomes, and you live your life on your nervous system, waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under your feet. The problem, really, isn’t that you want things. The problem is that you’ve been taught that once you stop wanting, once that ambition runs out, something bad will happen.

You catastrophise that you won’t matter anymore, or that you’ll be back to the council estate. So you keep going and keep pushing because you can’t *stand* that stillness. And then, when you do anything meaningful, the joy goes up in flames because that necessity you carry with you, even when you don’t need it anymore, is incendiary and burns up everything in its path until you’ve deprived yourself of all things that aren’t related to professional success: your relationships, your health, or – dare I say – fun.

It leaves you with the unsettling thought that I had at the end of last year: is this it? Not these achievements, which I’m proud of, but this feeling? This can’t be it.

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably thinking: sh*t, this woman needs therapy. You’d be totally right, and that – thankfully – made it to this year’s bingo card. Until then, I’ll be using writing because it won’t ask me: so, how do you feel about that? And it sure as hell won’t recommend that I try mindfulness. Do you know how f*cking hard mindfulness is when you’re as highly strung as I am? How am I meant to let my thoughts come and go like traffic when ther-

Anyway. I digress.

I don’t have the answers to the question I posed earlier. Maybe I will when I get some therapy. But I do have a few things that I’m holding alongside it.

Maybe the places we’re going were never meant to arrive, or, at least, they were never meant to arrive permanently.

This idea of a destination that you reach where confetti cannons go off – and you’re given the key to the city – and there’s a cake baked out of rainbows and smiles – was never real to begin with. Life is beautiful and it’s exciting and it’s fun and it’s wonderful, but it can also be brutal and tiring and stress inducing. Waiting for a long stretch of pure bliss, or this moment of true self actualisation never comes. Or, if it does come, chances are it’ll be a much wider picture. Rather than waiting for a block of consistent joy and bliss, maybe the best that any of us can really hope for is a day where we’re not wanting to totally tear our hair out for 30% of it. That’s good enough. Rough with the smooth and all that. A therapist would tell me to practise noticing moments of joy, but that sounds a lot like mindfulness and that cult will never catch me(!!!!)

Becoming someone doesn’t mean abandoning who you were, and achieving the next goal doesn’t have to mean that where you’re at isn’t good enough.

For so long, I treated my younger self like a problem to outgrow – a version of me that I would never value and I was waiting to get out of the way so this new successful version of myself could come through. When I look back at everything I’ve achieved, when I really boil it down to its core, none of that was done by obsessing over some future version of myself in five years time. Everything I have achieved that has been worth achieving has come from taking the next right step, adding a brick to my foundations, and letting the work speak for itself over time. We don’t know what future us is going to want, nor do we know if future us is going to thank us for the goals we set ourselves all those years ago – thank god I never followed through on that year where I wanted to be an archeologist. I hate dust, and I’m incredibly impatient.

The best any of us can ask for is that we’re grateful to ourselves for continuing to show up, and kind to ourselves when we feel like we can’t.

And perhaps the hardest thing I’m learning…

You don’t heal the ache of “never enough” by finally being enough on paper.

You recognise that the first step to healing this part of you is recognising that it’s something that you might never be able to truly fix. That your struggle to be satiated by your successes, as impressive as they may be objectively, is due to environmental factors that happened to you when you were learning – at that formative age – how to love yourself in this world. Let the first bit of kindness you give yourself be this realisation: that you can allow yourself to be seen, loved and appreciated for where you are, not just where you’re going.

If you’re reading this and left last year feeling unsettled, or if you’re terrified that achieving what you want won’t fix the feeling you thought it would – I want you to know that you’re not ungrateful, and you are certainly not alone.

This year I’m not making any resolutions, nor am I going to be benchmarking myself against some sort of future state self. Instead, I’m going to keep reminding myself that my self worth isn’t waiting for me in the future, but that it’s been right here all along…

… oh, and I’m definitely going to therapy.