Let a harmonica player quaver a blues for the British bourgeoisie, which has fallen on hard times. Tumbleweed is rolling down a Henley street past boarded-up wine bars and antique shops. On the evening train back to Tunbridge Wells, solicitors slump dog-tired from their day’s toil in the nit-picking fields. By the dusty roadside in St Albans a property consultant holds a crude sign proclaiming: “Will work for claret.”

Such piteous scenes are easily imagined if you believe a slew of articles in non-pink newspapers concerning the “Coping Class”. Their thesis has been that a swathe of the middle class is in dire financial straits as its tax and living costs soar. The centre of this disaster varies according to the target readership of each publication. But the common theme, as précised by the splendidly splenetic Daily Mail is this: “The obscenely rich are getting richer, while the middle classes, working harder than ever, are becoming steadily poorer.”