Labour’s problem is that many now identify the party with social security ‘scroungers’ and immigrants

Social identities and perceptions of social cleavages have not lost their mobilising capacity: they have been reconfigured, argues Eric Shaw. People are less likely, for example, to see themselves (in a politically significant way) as working class but as respectable ‘hard-working families’. The problem that Miliband and the Labour party have is that many people associate them with benefit claimants and immigrants.