Owen Jones opens Chavs with an uncomfortable vignette from an east London dinner party where, a few months after the start of the credit crunch, a group of well-educated professionals are eating a blackcurrant cheesecake. ‘Suddenly, one of the hosts tried to raise the mood by throwing in a light-hearted joke. “It’s sad that Woolworth’s is closing. Where will all the chavs buy their Christmas presents?”’

Jones’s companions that night would place themselves left-of-centre politically, he thinks: 

They would have bristled at being labelled a snob. If a stranger had attended that evening and disgraced him or herself by bandying around a word like ‘Paki’ or ‘poof’, they would have found themselves swiftly