 Are restaurant owners working class? Are property developers in charge of 13 million pound developments working class? It might seem like a silly question. You might think, no, obviously these people are not. There is no rundown of the different classes that includes restaurant owners and property developers in the section called working class. But the Guardians North of England editor disagrees. This became apparent when sort of people online really did a bit of digging into an article that was published this week in The Guardian. Let's take a look at this. Imagine the state we'd be in if Corbyn had been in charge. The view from the red wall. Working class voters in Lee do not regret voting for Tories after listening to Chancellor's summer statement. Sort of classic Guardian Corbyn bashing piece. But the question one has to ask after reading, you know, what's this based on? Has a poll been done? Is there a survey? No, there are four people cited in the article. Two are retired. One was still at school and the only one currently working owned an artisan, Pete Sareas. This is The Guardian's image of the working class here. So let's go to a couple of quotes from the article. This is character one. In Lee Town Centre on Wednesday afternoon, Andrew Twentiman was on the phone sourcing Nugia Sausage for his artisanal Pete Sopala. Recently reopened at under 50% capacity. A first-time Tory voter in December's general election, Sunak's hospitality package made him feel massively vindicated for switching his vote from Labour. Can you imagine what state we'd be in if Jeremy Corbyn had been in charge of all this? He asked, well, I mean, can you imagine? Probably the government would have listened to the trade unions and they would have stopped forcing people to go into work earlier. They probably would have stopped people going on to full public transport buses and trains and we would have had less bus drivers passing away. I mean, I think probably it could have been a lot better if Jeremy Corbyn was in charge. But anyway, we'll listen to this guy who makes Nugia pizzas. Let's go to the other couple who are in this. So we're missing out the schoolgirl and we're going to Keith and Jacqueline Park. So this is a section about Keith Park. He recently retired from the NHS where he worked for years as an infectious disease nurse. He felt able to vote Tory only after burying his dad. He'd kill me. And he said he was primarily motivated by a desire to cut immigration in a borrower that is 97% white. Whole sections of leader colonised with new entrants, he said in March, claiming that when he used to do contact tracing for TB, almost all the new infections came from asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East. Now, there are two obvious issues here looking at those two quotes. Which is one, is it okay to quote that claim about TB without a fact check? Obviously, there's a lot of dog whistles going on there. But also why are these taken as representatives of working class voters? None of them have working class jobs. It's only for people. Can you really say the Lee working class are really glad they voted against Jeremy Corbyn because of these four interviews? The fact that this sensationalist conclusion was drawn from such a small sample looks even worse when you look at Pid's previous piece on Lee's working class. Now, let's pick up this piece from a month ago where she interviewed again for Lee resident. Two of the four, pizza shop owner, Andrew Twentyman and retired nurse, Keith Park. So the gardeners keep going back to this town interviewing the same people and saying, this is what the authentic working class of Lee think. You might think if you're only going to get four people, at least make sure that you find them in a sort of robust way. Maybe you get a polling company in someone who puts together focus groups so you can pick people who are particularly representative of the different communities in the area. That doesn't seem to be what happened. Let's bring up this tweet which people found on Twitter from Helen Pid. I just ate an excellent pizza in Lee and you should too. Twentyman's the place is called. This is the north of England editor who's written a piece about what people in Lee think. She's going to the same two people for every article and it's just someone who she bought pizza from. So you often get this thing when you're watching commentators speak on television where most of their opinions from ordinary people are from cabbies. And the reason this is is because the only time these people meet ordinary people is when they're getting a cab from their home to the TV studio politicians do the same thing. Now what we get is guardian journalists who get all of their opinions from restaurant owners when they get artisan pizzas and now they claim that's the voice of the constituency. Guys what do you make of this Aaron? I know you've been incensed about this particular story today. We talk about client journalism in this country but I never thought client journalism would mean that you would write a guy into two of your stories from one town just because he gave you a free quattro stagione pizza. That's not what I think of with client journalism. You can be a little bit more ambitious with that I think Helen. You're a northern editor of the Guardian. It's a big publication after all. By the way if you go on Instagram 20 man, I think 20 man pizza xx the pizzas look horrendous. They're all burnt. They're all burnt. The bases are different size. There's something in this guy's a baker my god. They're putting on like he's just throwing ingredients on it's not a pizza. I always forget Aaron that you're half Italian and then you show a shoddy pizza with some off brand toppings and suddenly this comes out. No it looks like somebody has pissed in a sponge and they've put sriracha sauce on top. They've covered it in sriracha sauce. That's what it looks like. It's this thick and it's covered in red sauce. Anyway and I'm thinking like you say is it a send up? Because it's called it's pronounced undoya by the way Michael. Yeah it's a kind of undoya so it's a bit like a meat sausage spread and it's delicious. It's like is this a send up? Is she taking the mickey out of herself? And then you've got this other guy saying about 97% 97% Lee it's 97 white rather. And we've got a problem with migrants and they're spreading all these diseases. You think he's saying illegal immigrants from Africa. What countries? And how do you know they're illegal immigrants? I mean I find it remarkable that a liberal journalist would just take all his crap at face value and say well this is what they're saying. Yeah maybe they're wrong. You have obviously to report what people are saying you also have responsibilities as journalists to aspire to the truth. It's not like you can interview somebody. What do people in Lees say about climate change? Oh well you know Mr John X says that it's actually a fabricated lie by a London based elite paedophile ring. Would you write that? No because it's fucking stupid. It's mad and this is and this is mad too Helen. So I mean it was one of the worst pieces of reports from journalism I've ever seen in my life and it is concerning. I was finished with this. Helen Pitt is so obsessed with Jeremy Corbyn. She dressed up as him at Halloween party. She dressed up as Jeremy Corbyn with big black eyes around you know I think I'm not interested in your strange vendetta right. I want you to tell me what people in Lees think about this scheme. People on Universal Credit in Lees have gone up 65% since this crisis began. Go talk to them. Go talk to the people who are actually furloughed staff rather than the restaurant owner who now doesn't have to pay them for the duration of the crisis. That would be it. You don't have to worry about people. Go talk to the staff not to the boss. I mean it really tells you there's something deeply wrong at a political level with senior people at the Guardian. If this is permissible, if this is normal, you know I don't think this is just a one-off. I think there's a significant problem of political culture amongst the liberal political kind of class in this country. It's not that big but you know it's very powerful. It's far more influential and has a far more prominent profile than the socialists left. If you're instinct is to interview the boss rather than the employees when you're working class people. There's a big problem there. And also I mean this is, I mean this might seem a little bit petty but it is funny. People looked up reviews for this particular restaurant and it doesn't seem like Andrew Twenty but he's a working class hero. Let's get one of them up. So someone puts them there. One of the best pieces I've ever had. So they think it's good even though you think it looks shit, Aaron. But a little on the expensive side for Lee, but worth a visit. Four stars. And now this is how 20 men response. Lewis, you get what you pay for. You have just reduced our average rating because you have an opinion about us being expensive. You didn't calculate in the cost involved in renovating the premises. Quality of service. Our pizzas which you can dine in and eat use only the finest Italian ingredients, not from concentrates or powders and cooked in a traditional wood-fired pizza oven far cheaper than tomatoes and only a fraction dearer than other takeaways. You can see why this guy doesn't sound like he was going to vote for Jeremy Corbyn. Like whatever the guy. To stay without any pay. Another reviewer, Tan Reynolds, gave the restaurants a three star review a year ago to which Andrew replied, Dan, is this review because you didn't get a chef job or because I didn't ask for your lamb terrine recipe that best your previous employer also rejected? Oh my God. This negative attitude towards your work and now as a small family run business is the reason I couldn't implore three stars. Oh my God. Kia Starma, Andrew Krentyman. This is the man whose vote you need. We need to be scapegoating people who give four stars at restaurants just because it's slightly pricey. I think that's the dividing line that we need in this party between the people and, well, everyone else I suppose, the bastards who give you four stars if you overcharge. So another thing people discovered about this fella, this person who Helen Pitts put forward is sort of like the working class voice. Tribune even of Lee. His brother, we can get this up from the Lee Journal, is a property developer in charge of a 13 million redevelopment in the center of town and in response to this. So Helen Pitt reads all of this sort of dismantling of the article and this is what she says. Let's get this up. For those alleged labor supporters who have been trying to get ex-labor voters in this story canceled, shame on you. Why not try to understand why Lee went Tory and what it will take to win these folk back instead of piling on? The obvious question there is who was getting canceled. I mean, they're just looking up reviews of the piece. No one's writing to anyone's boss. This guy is his boss. You can't get the pensioners canceled because they're retired. But anyway, I don't think anyone was trying to get anyone canceled. This follow-up was what really got people going though. From Helen Pitt, northern editor at The Guardian, you can be working class and run a restaurant or indeed be a property developer. Ask Andrew Trenthewitt how much money he makes for the pizzeria. The minimum wage. The Guardian interviews universal credit claimants all the time. I'm sure I will do so in Lee before too long. I mean, you've been writing pieces about what Lee thinks for months now. Maybe you should have found someone who didn't own a pizza shop or was retired, who was at school before you started writing articles about what the working class of Lee think. The other thing is every business owner tells you they're on the minimum. This is how people do their tax returns. The other thing of how I'll touch these people, everyone knows that self-employed people always tell you they don't earn much money. That's how they do that. That's how you add up the sum. It's not quite tax avoidant. Everyone knows it apart from Helen Pitt, northern editor at The Guardian. Aaron, you look desperate to be. I have many films about this. One, trying to get people canceled. I loved it. It was just like 999. I like to report an attempt to cancellation. Like, it is completely meaningless. The two is that it does speak to the completely asked backwards way we conceive of class in this country, which is completely abstracted from and distinct from discussions of wealth. And that's why we can have these kind of strange kind of cultural hang-ups about what does and what doesn't constitute a middle class identity. So even though this guy is running an artisanal pizza parlor, and he's spreading, how do I pronounce it? Enduha. Enduha. Enduha. Induha. Induha. Induha. Induha. Okay. I have mangled that. I'm so sorry. But even though these are traditional signifiers of bougie-ness, because he's got a regional accent and reactionary politics, it must mean he is authentic sort of the earth working class. However, if you're a delivery rider and you're earning less than minimum wage and you're in debt and you can't pay your rent, but God help you, you live in Hackney, sorry, middle class, elitist, metropolitan, out of touch. All these signifiers, they're both completely vapid, but they're also malleable. They can be attached to other things to serve particular political purposes. And I don't think that it's an accident. And I don't purely think it's, it's not just the result of media idiocy, that we have an idea of working class in this country, which is essentially small business owner, who's likely on 50, 60K a year. That's what we think of as working class in this country. And that's all about how you position yourself vis-a-vis socially progressive politics. And it's a really good, it's ideologically useful for the right to go, this is the authentic working class, or this other lot, or elitist. It means that you can use the language of minoritarian grievance to articulate dominant political interests. So you can say these are the people who are the real left behind, and they're not. They're homeowners, they're comfortable, they're pensioners, you know, they're small business owners. Whereas the working age, working class, the majority of the working age, working class, are sort of castigated and dismissed. They have their political interests dismissed, you know, their voting behaviour dismissed, because, oh, you know, you're just middle class lovies. And they are only, of course, that this is all being written up by middle class journalists. So it's not just idiocy, it's not an accident, it serves an ideological purpose. I just want to say, you've said Helen Pitt is middle class, but she might dispute that, because as someone whose definition of working class seems to be, has some reactionary opinions at a northern accent, she does have a northern accent, and it seems she has some reactionary opinions. Let's get a tweeter from 2015. A dismaying number of voters I've met in Oldham today can't speak English, despite living there a decade or more. But their voting labour, how does she know they've lived there a decade or more if they can't speak English? How does she know they're voting labour? Yeah, a decade or more. I'm going to tell you my life story. Oh, yeah, you guys, what the fuck? That doesn't add up, Helen. But also, you know what this stuff is. You know what this stuff is, right? Those dogs are barking in the background. It's this idea that labour scams votes from immigrants who, you know, perhaps even participate in postal voter fraud, which is the whole rumour mill, which when it's overdrive after the Peterborough by-election result, right, this classic dog whistle stuff. And it's about discrediting the political participation of people of colour. And it also, I'm sorry, like half the time when someone goes, oh, yeah, that person doesn't speak English, it just means that they have an accent. A lot of the time, right? When someone says don't speak English, it just means I hear an accent and it makes it difficult for me to hear and understand this person because every time I hear an accent, I just think, well, you're half a human being, aren't you? And one of the reasons why I bring this up and I'm so incensed is do you remember when I was working at that pub when I first knew you two? Sometimes I'd have Navarra meetings and I'd sneak your free Peroni. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I miss those days. Yeah, I mean, listen, you've got to get me back working at the Blueie. But I remember one night I was working at the pub and someone put a complaint in to my manager about the quality of my spoken English. They said, how dare you hire this barmaid who can't speak English? And I was just like, listen, you prick, I'm doing an English degree. But again, it's about how people react to signifiers of racial and cultural otherness because that tweet doesn't make sense. How do you know they lived there a decade? How do you know that they're voting Labour if they don't speak English? Probably means that they have an accent. Maybe they're evasive and not as forthcoming as you would like because they don't want to talk to you. They're capable of speaking English. They just don't really want to talk to you. They don't want to talk to Karen Pid, all right? Sorry. Also, can I just say one more thing in regard to all of this? Ash has already sort of touched upon it. A majority of the working age population voted Labour in the last general election. A majority of renters voted Labour at the last general election. What does working class mean for these people? Working class is anybody who isn't a trade unionist, who isn't a renter, who isn't under 40, who has a university degree, who's from a minority background, or who potentially has a left-wing opinion, right? So basically, you have about sort of 70% of the country who's excluded from being a working class. Radicalised homeowners, radicalised homeowners are the real working class. The left behind, the people who've paid off their 500,000-pound mortgages, how will they survive with this half a million-pound asset? Come on. How will they get by these poor people downtrodden by the political class for too long? And the thing is, a lot of these same people actually think that they're downtrodden. They honestly think that they're the victims.