Labour sets up class unit as social mobility advisers ditched

The Education Secretary has established a new equalities unit focused on social class, while dismissing the existing social mobility advisers. The BBC reports Bridget Phillipson has set up a class unit; the Guardian says ministers will put white working-class people at the heart of the new body; GB News frames it as putting social class on par with race and gender.

The Social Mobility Commission was established as the Child Poverty Commission and has operated under various names since. Its commissioners have now been told their services are no longer required. The new unit sits within the Department for Education and reports directly to ministers, rather than operating at arm's length.

The word doing work here is equalities. For decades equalities policy sorted by race, sex, disability and later sexuality - categories the law names and protects. Class was the dimension British politics talked about constantly but never coded into the equalities framework. By placing class inside that framework, the government makes it a protected characteristic in policy terms, even if not yet in statute. The question is whether this is a genuine rebalancing or a preemptive move in a climate where some voters feel the existing categories leave them out.

What to watch: whether the unit survives the next reshuffle, and whether any of its recommendations reach statute. Advisory bodies come and go; the ones that matter change the law.