In The Road to Wigan Peer (1937), George Orwell observed that the middle class was destined to “sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose but our aitches”.

Orwell was a brilliant man but this was not one of his more prophetic predictions. For as we report today, class in Britain is more a matter of “rising” than “sinking” and it is the “tees” in words that the middle class has sacrificed. A survey commissioned by Liverpool Victoria shows that the proportion of people who consider themselves “middle-class” has soared since a similar poll 40 years ago.

Back then, a modest 30 per cent put themselves with the bourgeoisie. The division today is 53 per cent who claim to be working-class compared with 43 per cent who opt for the middle-class label. On this basis, it is predicted, the self-identified middle class will overtake the working class by about 2020.

If it does, then perception will have matched reality two decades late. The sociologists, whose research shapes all opinion polls, have already declared that Britain has arrived in sun-dried tomato territory. What they describe in laboratory terms as the ABC1s (the middle class) reached 51 per cent of the population in 2000. With each year, they expect, that figure should edge up higher. While it remains true that the top and bottom tenths of the nation remain (regrettably) static, the movement occurring in the middle of the class spectrum is striking.

Some may sentimentally lament the decline of a cloth cap culture. And it should be conceded that Ikea Man is not necessarily the zenith of civilisation. Yet the onward march of the middle class should really be applauded. It would not be possible without rising levels of overall prosperity, an enormous expansion of higher education and many more opportunities for a larger slice of the population to enjoy such events as foreign holidays that were deemed the preserve of the wealthy. Membership of the middle class is, to borrow a phrase, a facility open to the many, and not the few.

A bigger middle class does not, however, mean that it is the same old middle class, but more so. Quite the opposite. The middle class of 1966 was not just more modest in size but concentrated very tightly in London and the South East, similar in its tastes and uniformly Conservative in its political inclinations. The modern middle classes — for in reality there are several — are diverse and fluid and a million miles from the stereotypes once captured in That Was The Week That Was. For example, the parliamentary constituency with the highest percentage of professional/managerial employees in its electorate is not a swanky part of London but Sheffield Hallam. Its MP is, tellingly, a Liberal Democrat.

This would have surprised Marx as much as Orwell. What was described as “class politics” is being superseded by a complex middle-class politics in which new Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens and even the flakier fringes of the ultra-left participate as well as Conservatives. This mosaic will be captured, in part, by the local election results today, notably in London.

In 1976, a cartoon in The Times featured an aristocratic individual and it carried the caption: “I don’t believe in class differences, but luckily my butler disagrees with me.” It would appear a very strange drawing to publish now.