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An important part of Labour’s election-winning coalition, and one that definitely shouldn’t be overlooked or taken for granted, are middle-class professionals. I’ll use my dad as an example
For almost all of his adult life, my dad has been a Tory. He voted for Mrs Thatcher in 1983 and voted Tory in every subsequent election all the way up to David Cameron in 2015. He liked Tony Blair, but voted tribally in all three of his elections because in his head he was a Tory
Then came Brexit. Dad, like most middle class professionals, voted Remain. He considered Leave to have badly considered arguments, and to be a vehicle racism, jingoism and anti-immigration rhetoric. He thought Boris Johnson was and is too and that Nigel Farage was a bigot
When Leave won, dad was disappointed. But his real fury was reserved for David Cameron for cutting and running almost immediately. “He said he’d handle this bit so he bloody well should do”. Dad had had a high opinion of Cameron, but that totally shattered it
After that, dad’s opinion of the Conservative Party as a whole dropped like a stone. He’s described it as a curtain lifting from his eyes, and he could see plainly that the referendum had been Cameron’s attempt to secure his control of the Tory Party.
He thought that calling the referendum was irresponsible, damaging and divisive, and he has never - and, he says, will never - forgive the Conservatives for that. Dad isn’t an isolated example. Coming from a middle-class background I know lots of people of my parents’ generation
who used to be staunch Tories but whom the party lost forever with Brexit. These are people who are comfortable with immigration, comfortable with globalism, and comfortable with multiculturalism. They are a world apart from the working class communities that voted to Leave
Since 2016, dad and others like him have seen the Tories engage in culture wars, appeal to a form of patriotism they don’t share - more insular than inclusive - and reject the values of openness and tolerance that, after the Labour and Cameron years, they had taken for granted
The middle class don’t like hard borders. They don’t like culture wars. They don’t like jingoism.
So that’s how the Tories lost dad. But how did Labour win him over? It certainly wasn’t that dad became a socialist, he emphatically isn’t. He thinks of himself even now as a straight down the middle centrist, and has a very good opinion of Tony Blair
Jeremy Corbyn definitely wasn’t the person to win dad and others like him over to the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn and his “the many vs the few” rhetoric didn’t appeal to a high earner like dad, who while absolutely fine with the idea that he should pay more taxes because he made
more money, didn’t much appreciate being talked down to and insulted while he was doing it. Instead, for a few years, dad was a supporter of the Liberal Democrats. He voted for them in 2017, the first time he’d ever not voted Tory, and again in the 2019 EU elections.
He would have voted for them in 2019 as well, but our constituency is a 2-horse race and dad didn’t want to split the anti-Tory vote. Through gritted teeth and highly reluctantly, dad voted Labour for the first time in his life. But he had absolutely no enthusiasm for Corbyn
and was neither surprised not particularly sad when Labour lost. Since then, however, Labour have appealed to dad more and more. He thinks Keir Starmer is brilliant, and likes the idea of a former DPP running the country instead of “a bloody lying journalist”.
He likes that Starmer hasn’t made much party political capital out of the crisis, seeing him as a man with principles who will put the national interest first. He’s even started watching Prime Minister’s Questions and is very impressed with Starmer’s Commons performances
Keir Starmer makes dad feel comfortable in the way David Cameron used to. In Starmer he recognises someone who shares his values and who will put the country back onto a path that he is familiar with. A large number of the middle class feel the same way, alienated by the Tories
but potentially fertile ground for Labour. If Labour can find a way of winning back the Red Wall AND winning over the former Cameronites, I don’t see how they can lose 
