If Norman St John Stevas can count as a royal expert because he once wrote a foreword to a book on the constitution, and if James Whitaker can be deployed as the final arbiter on all matters constitutional because he used to write about Princess Margaret’s holidays for the Mirror, then I should like to lay claim to a slice of the action in the great Kate Middleton media-fest by outing myself as an authority on the class system.

My qualifications? Well, actually it’s vulgar to ask personal questions like that — as you would know if you’d been properly brought up. But, since you ask, I used to work for Tatler, the magazine known as Britain’s society bible. Since then I have been interviewed for Channel 4’sToff at the Top — and yes, I put in a pretty abject performance, but that’s not the point here — so on the basis of having discussed Etonians on telly once and worked for a glossy mag, I think my credentials as an expert on social class are as flawless as Sarah Montague’s cut-glass accent. In any case, they are no worse than those of other commentators who have piled in to the Great Debate precipitated by William’s ditching of Kate, at the heart of which is the cruelly simple question: was she just too middle class?

Over the past few days there has been a torrent of revelations designed to show up Kate and, in particular, her mother (never mum under any circs, just possibly mummy in conversation) Carole (ooh, the vulgar obtrusiveness of that final e!) as simply too bourgeois for the royals. Mrs Middleton is in trade (she runs a mail-order firm!), she used to work for an airline (which caused William’s friends to herald Kate’s arrival with cries of “doors to manual”), she chews gum (the hussy!) and, worst of all, she refers to the lavatory as the toilet.

The shock induced by the last of these revelations is, I have to say, in its own way revealing to those of us with close and detailed knowledge of the nuances of the British class system. Ever since Nancy Mitford produced her classic vial of pure, triple-distilled snobbery in book form, Noblesse Oblige, in which she outlined those dreadful phrases (toilet, mirror, perfume) that mark their user as irredeemably common (non-U), the certainty with which she pronounced has been progressively undermined. I remember at Tatler the great care with which one editor chose her words to ensure that not a single non-U phrase passed her lips, in the hope that no one could discern her distinctly middle-class Metro-land origins. But the very care with which she chose her words, her clothes, even her holiday destinations, betrayed someone who was picking her way through a social minefield with just too much circumspection. Her studied immersion in all the little rituals of snobbery, which she thought signified a confident grasp of what was required by her status, only undermined the impression of ease and confidence that she sought. It wasn’t long before, partly in reaction to her preciousness about these things, junior staff at the magazine started referring to loos as toilets, napkins as serviettes and jams as preserves. The poor woman was in the unfortunate position of a sailor who has mas- tered the art of rigging a topsail just as the first steamship is glimpsed on the horizon — her skills were hard-won, her mastery of them impressive but she was simply outpaced by changes that she didn’t quite grasp.

What she failed most of all to grasp, however, and what so many commentators in the wake of the Great Kate Break-Up have failed to grasp, is that those with the most class mind least. It is, in short, rather vulgar to notice someone’s class background, let alone to refer to it or to judge someone on that basis. Now there is a subtlety here (or what passes for a subtlety in the frenzied world of snob-commentary), in that the original anathema pronounced on toilet (or acts such as the use of fish-knives) was a way of stigmatising the act of trying too hard for a certain mimsy gentility. To be too decorous or euphemistic was to be that fretful, frightful thing, a bourgeois, and therefore of less distinction than a couldn’t-give-a-toss, call-a-spade-a-spade aristo.

Actually, even to remark on the language that someone is using, to take the trouble to worry about whether their mum was an air hostess or a hot heiress, is to take yourself down the social scale several notches. All those commentators trying to pigeonhole Kate’s mother are saying far more about themselves, far more damningly, than anything they reveal about this admirable, entrepreneurial and really incredibly good-looking-for-her-age Berkshire mother.

As for Kate herself, she obviously has tremendous poise, natural beauty and a loving family. Having been through the fire of media pressure she has retained her cool in a way that proves she is a class act.

But what sort of woman would now willingly expose herself and her family to the level of scrutiny that Kate has endured? And what does that mean for the type of person likely to make a beeline for the newly single Prince William? Each man, Oscar Wilde wrote, kills the thing he loves. What are the media doing to our monarchy?

Brothers and sisters, I’m off

I have been a member of a trade union for nearly 20 years now. The union to which I belong, the National Union of Journalists, kept me fed and watered when I was a young trainee and out on strike. I was grateful for the support and camaraderie of its members and appreciated the virtues of solidarity. As time has worn on I’ve kept faith with the union because it kept me going at a difficult time.

With the benefit of hindsight I realise that the strike for which I came out in support was mishandled. Better men and women than I, with much more to lose, lost it in a vain struggle. Yet they made those sacrifices in defence of a principle in which they believed, and they thought that their actions would protect younger journalists like me most. So it would have been more than churlish to fail to respect their sacrifice.

But now, reluctantly, I fear that I will have to part company with the union, even as I continue to respect the men and women who went out on strike, in its name, in Aberdeen nearly two decades ago. Because the NUJ recently passed a motion at its conference calling for a boycott.

This boycott is not of a repressive state that outlaws free expression (of which, sadly, there are still too many) but of one of the few states in the Middle East with a proper free press: Israel.

The NUJ exists to defend, among other virtues, freedom of speech. That virtue is better defended in Israel than in any other nation of the Middle East and it comes under assault daily from forces driven by fanaticism.

Now is a time, for all sorts of reasons, for showing solidarity with those defending democracy in that region, not for passing on the other side of the road. So, with no little sadness, I feel that I have to leave.

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