New Statesman - 25 October 2007

Middle Englanders are insular, selfish and intolerant. Not so, argues Richard Reeves. Plus Stephen Armstrong on the Accidental Middle Englanders

It is a place inhabited by "ordinary people with suburban dreams who worked hard to improve their homes and their lives; to get gradually better cars, washing machines and televisions; to go on holiday in Spain rather than Bournemouth", in the words of the new Labour strategist Philip Gould. It is where homes are anxiously owned, families are raised and crime is feared. The Daily Mail lies on the doorsteps. It is where contemporary British elections are won and lost. And it casts a powerful spell over marketeers, pollsters, journalists and - above all - politicians. It is, of course, "Middle England".

When Gordon Brown praises "hard-working families" or when David Cameron takes the axe to inheritance tax, they are assumed by headline-writers to have their eyes trained on this semi-mythical land. It represents, we are supposed to assume, the very heartland of the nation. As such, it acts as a kind of political bull's-eye: if parties can aim their policies directly at Middle England, the electoral match will be theirs.

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