The trouble for Labour with running class-based attacks on the Tories is that, for much of the public, all politicians are members of a privileged elite living in a foreign country. The differences between Nottingham High and Eton may be a gaping chasm in Balls's mind: they are all part of the same world of privilege to voters who have to send their own children to the local bog-standard comp. A party led by Ed Miliband will find it extremely difficult to present itself as representing Everyman — to most voters the world of Marxist north London intellectuals from which he hails is every bit as foreign, and rather more exotic, than that of Home Counties stockbrokers.

Austin Mitchell, the 79-year-old Labour MP for Grimsby who last month announced he would be stepping down at the 2015 general election, said as his parting shot that Miliband needs to "bring the debate down to the level of ordinary people . . . [he] needs to get out and mix with ordinary people more." This must be a somewhat galling statement coming from Mitchell, whose appearance in Tower Block of Commons — a Channel 4 series in which MPs swapped places with council block tenants living on benefits — did nothing to reinforce his own image as a tribune of the people. Nevertheless, the comment does reflect a wide popular perception of Miliband and will have some resonance.

UKIP seems to be the only party which has managed to capitalise on the public contempt for the otherness of politicians. This may be somewhat ironic — its leader Nigel Farage is a public-school-educated former stockbroker who has been an elected politician for 15 years. But nevertheless he has so far not been sullied in the same way for being remote from ordinary people's lives and concerns. Farage has achieved this — whatever one may think of his policies — not by pretending to be something he isn't but by talking about issues that matter to many voters, especially the broad mass of lower-middle-class and aspirational working-class voters that Labour must win over if it is to achieve secure majorities in the future. This seems to have worked rather better in catching the voters' imagination than Balls's inverted snobbery and his promises of squeezing the rich until the pips squeak.