George 'Gideon' Osborne will have caught it in the neck from his spin doctors for a maladroit attempt to come across as a man of the people (‘we're all in this together’, don’t forget). The shadow chancellor argued that his school, St Paul's, is ‘incredibly liberal’ because ‘your mother could be the head of a giant corporation, or a solicitor in Kew’.

As acerbic Independent columnist Johann Hari has pointed out, the clear inference here is that being a solicitor in Kew is the lowest rung on the social ladder.

Are you a solicitor in Kew? If so, we'd like to hear your harrowing tales of making ends meet on the Poor Law and the heartache that comes every festive season when your whey-faced infants press their angelic little faces to the toy shop window with longing for the presents they will never get. Life in the more agreeable west London suburbs is no bowl of cherries, and for that we greatly sympathise.