A More Working-Class British Cabinet, Still Seen as Out of Touch

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s top team contains more lawmakers from poor backgrounds, and fewer from elite schools, than any in recent memory. Voters haven’t noticed.

Hot water was a luxury in the home where Angela Rayner, Britain’s deputy prime minister, was raised. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, was born to a single mother who pawned her jewelry to make ends meet. Racist skinheads shouted abuse at the young David Lammy, a Black Briton who is now foreign secretary, near his home in a deprived part of north London.

Britain’s current cabinet, the country’s 22 senior lawmakers including the prime minister, Keir Starmer, is one of the most working class in the nation’s history. Only one attended a private school, and several spent their early lives in poverty. Mr. Starmer, whose father worked in a factory, has recounted when their phone was cut off because his parents couldn’t pay the bills.

Yet, while the cabinet may be more like many of the people it governs, Britons don’t seem to have noticed.

According to one recent opinion poll, fewer than one in four people see the Labour government, which came to power in July, as caring about “people like them,” while almost two-thirds of voters see it as not bothered by the interests of normal people.

That impression has been shaped in part by recent revelations that senior Labour figures accepted free gifts from party donors, including clothing and eyeglasses for Mr. Starmer and dresses for his wife.

But the glaring disparity between the humble social origins of top ministers and the way they are perceived, analysts say, underscores the disenchantment many Britons feel with the system, and with the political class in general.

Whatever their social origins, many Labour figures look like identikit politicians at a time when voters seem to be turned off by the unspoken rules of mainstream politics, said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham.

“One reason why politicians from a working-class background who are in the cabinet are there is because they have adhered to a model that a lot of people find frustrating,” he said.

He added that the ascent to high office invariably changes the way the public perceives someone’s status. “If you are in the cabinet then — by definition — you are no longer exactly working class.”

Class consciousness has historically been deeply ingrained in Britain, with ongoing debate about the impact of a regional accent or a particular school on career outcomes. Three-quarters of Britons said they believed that social class affects someone’s opportunities “a great deal” or “quite a lot,” in a poll last year by NatCen, an annual social attitudes survey.

Labour’s landslide election victory in July ushered in a striking change in the social makeup of the government, as the Conservatives were banished to the opposition.

“Forty-three percent of Keir Starmer’s cabinet come from working-class backgrounds, in that their parents had working-class jobs,” said Aaron Reeves, co-author of a book about Britain’s elite called “Born to Rule,” and a professor at the London School of Economics. “For the outgoing Conservative cabinet that was about 7 percent.”

In terms of education, the shift is equally stark.

Nine top private schools, including Eton, Harrow and Winchester, have produced two-thirds of all prime ministers in Britain, despite educating fewer than 0.2 percent of all British schoolchildren. The same schools have produced more than half of lawmakers who held the so-called great offices of state, which include chancellor of the Exchequer and foreign secretary, according to Sam Friedman, also a professor at the London School of Economics, and Mr. Reeves’s co-author.

Only one member of Mr. Starmer’s cabinet went to a private school, the lowest number in British history. That contrasts with almost two-thirds of the cabinet under Rishi Sunak, his predecessor, according to the Sutton Trust, an organization that promotes social mobility.

Labour ministers are not shy about advertising their working class credentials. At their annual conference last month the business and trade secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, whose father was a firefighter and whose mother worked for a door-to-door loans company, began his speech by saying he was “proud to be a part of the most working-class cabinet in British history.”

But getting that idea across has not been helped by the furor over freebies. Although no rules appear to have been broken, it has threatened to reinforce the impression that politicians of all political stripes are self-serving.

“While talking about their working-class origins has been an important and genuine way the Labour cabinet have communicated their ordinariness to the public, the freebie scandal has strongly eroded the image of being normal, meritocratic and unspectacular,” said Professor Friedman. “Free clothes, free tickets, free parties paid for, the use of expensive apartments when they need them — all this signals a life of privilege, not ordinariness.”

Britain’s right-leaning media leaped on the revelations. Conservative politicians have long done their best to put distance between Mr. Starmer and his working-class background. Many pointedly refer to him as “Sir Keir” and his wife as “Lady Victoria” — titles they rarely use — leading some voters to believe wrongly that they were aristocrats by birth. (Mr. Starmer was given a knighthood in 2014 for serving as chief public prosecutor.)

On Wednesday, Downing Street said that Mr. Starmer had repaid more than 6,000 pounds — almost $7,900 — to cover gifts he received since becoming prime minister, including the cost of Taylor Swift concert tickets.

Three months after winning power, the government has so far implemented few policies to help working people but angered many by curtailing fuel subsidy payments for retirees. It has announced plans to remove a tax exemption from private schools, however, something previous Labour administrations never attempted, and its first budget at the end of October may contain more targeted policies.

Of its top team, Ms. Rayner overcame considerable obstacles. She was raised in public housing and left school at 16, pregnant and with no qualifications. After becoming a care worker, she rose through the trade union movement before running for Parliament.

In her traditional union background, she is something of an exception. Other senior Labour figures have made their way to the top by working for advocacy groups, charities or as researchers and advisers for Labour lawmakers.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, was also raised in public housing and has described being ostracized on the playground because she was poor. She did well at school, got to Oxford University and managed a refuge for women and children fleeing domestic violence before becoming a lawmaker.

In spite of these meritocratic success stories, the nature of modern party management and the tightly controlled presentation of politicians in a 24/7 news environment — where one bad interview can ruin a career — can add to officials’ seeming remoteness.

Most of Labour’s top team “have been schooled into that model of how to do politics which many people now reject,” said Professor Fielding. They rarely stray from preplanned talking points and tend to be risk averse in media interviews.

By contrast, a populist like Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-immigration Reform U.K. party, has cultivated an outsider’s appeal to voters in struggling regions, even though he attended an exclusive private school and worked as a commodity trader.

“The irony,” Professor Fielding added, “is that it is someone like Nigel Farage on this side of the Atlantic, and Donald Trump on the other, who can use that to win support from voters who are working class.”