Black people are more prominent than ever in the UK’s politics and culture. But are they overwhelmingly from the middle class, as Brown argues in his new book? And if so, why isn’t anyone talking about it?

Symeon Brown and David Lammy went to the same primary school in Tottenham, north London. One went on to a selective secondary school, and became the second black person to hold one of Britain’s great offices of state. The other became a journalist who would go on to survey the country’s black professional class more thoroughly than anyone ever had – and who remembers being told by Lammy that he could “never become prime minister, because you sound like where you come from”.

It was 2010, and Brown, interested in politics, was interning for the then Labour backbencher. “And he was right, certainly at the time,” Brown says now.

PM’s team can be seen as backward step even though in some ways it is more diverse. Yet its makeup points to wider access to power

• Race, school, gender: the makeup of Andy Burnham’s cabinet – in charts

Like 20 British prime ministers before him, Andy Burnham’s new cabinet minister for AI, Kanishka Narayan, went to Eton. After graduating from the country’s most elite private school, Narayan attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied – what else? – PPE (politics, philosophy and economics), like David Cameron, Rishi Sunak, Ed Miliband and a host of other senior politicians. An MBA at Stanford and a career in the City followed.

But Narayan’s background is hardly typical of the British ruling class. Born in Bihar in eastern India, he moved with his family to Cardiff when he was 12. He and his younger brother were sleeping on the floor of their one-bedroom home when a teacher at his local high school suggested the bright young boy apply for some private schools. His parents, who had joined the Labour party almost as soon as they arrived in Wales, ran a petrol station. Eton was possible only thanks to a full scholarship.

‘Polyclass’ of 6 million people consider themselves to belong to more than one social category, researchers say

More than a third of Britons say they have changed social class, with upper-middle and upper-class people most likely to identify as belonging to more than one class, according to a survey.

Working-class people were the least likely to say they had changed class or identified with more than one, with 70% saying they were in the same social category they were born into, the study by research firm Attest found.

Hemmed in by the sea and poor transport links, many young people from the Yorkshire town feel trapped, but there is also a pride in the area

It’s the morning after a wet and stormy day in the Yorkshire seaside town of Scarborough. The waves, which the previous day had been crashing dramatically on the harbour walls, have calmed and a few brave souls have entered the water with surfboards. There is a man throwing a ball for his dog on the beach and a kayaker bobbing on the waves.

Just up from the seafront in the centre of town, Jack and Charlie, both 17, are leaning forward listening to a story from 19-year-old Keane about his recent visit to a drama school in London, where he is hoping to apply for a place on an actor training course once he has saved enough money.

Scarborough, on the North Yorkshire coast, was one of England’s first seaside resorts

When Essex University’s Southend campus opened, it was a message of hope for a ‘left behind’ UK seaside town. Its closure will be felt far beyond its 800 students, some of whom will not get their degrees

The seaside city of Southend-on-Sea, on England’s east coast, looks grey on a winter afternoon in term-time. Its high street, bordering the university campus, is sparsely populated with market stalls, vape shops and discount retailers, and feels unusually quiet.

“There used to be lots of shops, restaurants and youth clubs around here,” says 23-year-old Nathan Doucette-Chiddicks. Now, the city is about to lose something else that it can scarcely do without.

Trinity Hall’s plan to target elite schools sends the message that privilege equals talent, when the reality is that poorer students are already on the back foot

A Cambridge college’s plan to target students from some of the country’s most elite private schools has struck a nerve. As reported by the Guardian, Trinity Hall justified the move by claiming that a focus only on “greater fairness in admissions” could “unintentionally result in reverse discrimination”. Alumni LinkedIn feeds and social media threads quickly filled with outrage, as many Cambridge graduates interpreted the move as class prejudice rearing its ugly head once again. One angry fellow at the college said it amounted to a “slap in the face” for their state-educated undergraduates.

It brought back memories of the sneering snobbery at Oxford when the former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, then principal of Lady Margaret Hall, introduced a new foundation year. “We don’t do hard luck stories,” sniffed one academic. “Oxford doesn’t do remedial education,” complained another. The foundation year at Oxford and also at Cambridge has since enjoyed huge success, proving that students who have faced great adversity or academic disadvantage can flourish when given the chance.

Lee Elliot Major is a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter. His forthcoming book Cracking the Class Codes is published in 2026.

Exclusive: Trinity Hall’s new policy described as a ‘slap in the face’ for state-educated students

A Cambridge college is to target the recruitment of students from elite private schools, interrupting decades of efforts to boost access for state-educated and disadvantaged pupils, the Guardian has learned.

Fellows at Trinity Hall college last month approved a policy to approach a small group of private schools, including St Paul’s Girls, Eton and Winchester, to improve the “quality” of students applying, claiming that “reverse discrimination” was a concern.