The collapse in the work ethic coincided with a breakdown in family relationships. Contraceptives brought the youth of all classes sexual liberation: yes, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven! But the middle classes, who led the libertarian revolution, had the cultural resources to temper their freedom: middle-class divorce and illegitimacy rates initially rose but then declined again. Working-class youth, meanwhile, was not truly liberated from the link between intercourse and pregnancy since that depended on a prudence which was largely lacking — severed from the cultural norms that had preserved the family.

Finally, the English working class lost its sense of pride. For the post-war generation, even if work and family failed, there was always the default option of pride in nation. But for the contemporary English working class this is no longer available. Probably since the Suez crisis, the middle-class Left in England has been hostile to national pride (in contrast to its counterparts in Scotland and, par excellence, France). Since the 1990s the official espousal of multiculturalism (again, in contrast to Scotland where it is irrelevant due to the paucity of immigrants, and to France where it is illegal) has inadvertently further undermined the English sense of nationhood. Meanwhile, the cultural messages to the English working class, transmitted through the National Curriculum or the children's television channel CBBC have been directed to other important goals such as normalising the presence of ethnic minorities.

 More generally, as a result of anti-nationalism and multiculturalism Englishness has become deeply unfashionable: who now admits to being English if they can claim some shred of another identity? The marginality of the ugly working-class backlash of nationalism is testimony to its disappearance from mainstream English culture. The flag of St George (in contrast to its Scottish or Welsh counterparts) is more likely to be daubed by vandals than flown by councils. The lack of pride in nation is of little consequence to the children of the middle class who increasingly perceive themselves as global citizens. With a middle-class education, whether private or state-financed in a middle-class neighbourhood, the children of the middle class aspire to play on the global rather than the national stage. That an astonishing 80 per cent of applicants to the civil service choose the Department for International Development (DFID) as their preferred assignment illustrates this perfectly.

Meanwhile, the children at the bottom of the working class now exist in a void where the evaporation of the previous structures of meaning — work, family and nation — have been replaced by  the fatalistic thrills of sensation: alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, crime and fashion. This cocktail, laced by short horizons that encourage indebtedness and early pregnancy, is inimical to achievement and has condemned the poorer half of English working-class children to becoming an underclass.