Class warfare: dirty stuff but it can work for Brown

The weekend newspaper columnists were still arguing over whether Gordon Brown should have used the E-word in PMQs on Wednesday (or whether Alistair Campbell should have told him to)... as in the Tories' inheritance tax proposals being "dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton".

In the Observer, Henry Porter's argument against the hoary old class warfare tactic was that class had never had anything to do with good leadership and he cited the dirt-poor beginnings of Abraham Lincoln to make his point.

"The better part of each one of us knows that class is an obstacle to understanding someone's character," said Porter, "and is certainly no way of assessing a potential leader. And actually the Conservative leadership needs to be exposed to far more rigorous tests."

Porter is right of course, but "the better part of us" has little to do with the dirty business of winning elections. And anyway the die is cast. Brown's strategists - including Campbell, who is popping in and out of Downing Street again as the election approaches - have made it quite clear that this line of attack will be repeated "on a daily basis", or until it no longer appears to be needling the Tories and delighting Labour backbenchers.

Which is important if Gordon is to keep his job through Christmas and the New Year. The cheers on Wednesday were the loudest for ages, even if many of those Labour MPs waving their order papers were privately hoping that no one would check on just how much they stand to inherit when mummy dies, nor for that matter what school they went to.

This isn't so much about bashing "Tory toffs", it's about exploiting the public sense that the Conservatives are more likely than Labour to serve vested interests, be they City bankers or country landowners.

As Matthew Parris put it on Saturday in the Times: "Brown wants to paint the Tories as toffs serving the interests of toffs; the rich and privileged governing for the rich and privileged.

"There will be commentary this weekend suggesting that to fall back on class warfare is for Labour a desperate core strategy [you're right Matthew, there was]. So it is. But it may be a necessary strategy, and to a limited degree could prove a successful one... The British public do not like vested interests, either of a class or a financial kind, and are permanently suspicious of their concealed presence in politics."

The big question is whether the class warfare line can continue to play as well as it did on Wednesday. Campbell and Co will not have forgotten the Crewe and Nantwich debacle in May last year.

This was the byelection in which Labour decided to brand the Tory candidate, Edward Timson, as a toff on the grounds that he was the heir to the Timson shoe repair chain. Labour party pamphlets described him as "a Tory boy who's used to being waited on, not serving other people" and posters of men in top hats and tails duly adorned the constituency.

Then it turned out that Labour's own candidate was listed in Burke's Peerage, the toffs' handbook. With a name like Tamsin Dunwoody-Kneafsey you might have thought someone would have guessed. But they didn't and Labour lost a safe seat.

The Mole's friends in Westminster say that what Brown and Darling need to do now is lay off the easy Eton jibes and show they mean it on the vested interests front: persuade dithering Labour supporters and floating voters that they are listening to the people, even at the risk of alienating those who - so the Brown mantra used to go - helped make us all better off before the banks went belly-up.

Which brings us to the Pre-Budget Report and whether Darling will tax bankers' bonuses or not. Most political pundits say he will, despite a lot of briefing to the contrary from Treasury spin-doctors that this is no time to soak the rich and frighten them away.

We'll find out on Wednesday whether Brown and Darling are prepared to get serious about "class warfare" and risk thousands of bankers fleeing to Switzerland. ·