downward mobility

Apparently they've relaunched the British class system. There was a test you could take on the BBC news website – two minutes and five questions later I learned that I was a member of the 'precariat'. What? What the hell? My thoughts exactly. I had started out thinking in a vague comfortable kind of way that I was probably lower middle-class, something in the middle anyway, nothing to get too worked up about, but then it turns out I'm something I've never even heard of. I have now. The precariat are the dispossessed. People on the edge of society. The bottom of the heap – or maybe not even in the heap. That, apparently, is what you get for living in rented accommodation and socialising with shop assistants.

The precariat, so I read, are characterised by lacking a stable identity (well yes, I can identify with that) and are likely to be attracted to far right political organisations - a tendency I must admit I haven't noticed in myself, though it might explain my strange obsession with the Daily Mail.

VILE PRODUCT OF WELFARE UK, blared its headline on Wednesday, describing 'Shameless' Mick Philpott, a serial benefit claimant who, along with his wife and a friend, plotted to burn down his own house (partly in a quest for a new and bigger one) while taking care to rescue his six children from the blaze. They managed the first part but unfortunately not the second. Thus they have been charged with manslaughter, though in the article which followed it was difficult to separate hard facts from fevered adjectives. Poor Mick could hardly have sex on a snooker table without it being described as 'sordid' - the sex, that is, not the snooker table, the snooker table was blameless. Well, maybe not, as it was a defining feature (along with 'two giant TV's) of what the paper was calling The House Of Depravity. The House Of Depravity! Sounds like it should be burned to the ground. Oh right, they've tried that.

Mick had previously featured on a programme with Anne Widdecombe and on The Jeremy Kyle Show, another thing for the Mail to sneer about, though his appearance in the paper only seemed like a continuation of his antics in the entertainment industry. Beneath the article's characteristic Daily Mail tone of voice (perhaps best described as 'ostensibly outraged yet secretly aroused') you could sense the journalists' excitement at so much good stuff coming their way. But it wasn't all fun and games. They were not unafraid to make a political point out of this tragedy, namely that the Welfare State was responsible. And you thought it was just liberals who blamed society.

Now, seemingly taking his cue from the Mail, George Osborne is saying that 'questions should be asked' about whether 'people like Mick Philpott' (Narcissistic psychopaths? Snooker enthusiasts? All benefit claimants?) should be entitled to state funding. The idea that the government is taking its cue from the Daily Mail is worrying, though as a member of the precariat, the idea of a swing to the right leaves me secretly aroused.

The absolute worst thing about the precariat – I speak as someone who has only just joined, or only just become aware of having joined – is their name. It isn't something you can speak with pride. Or even shame. It's just awkward. Perhaps its time to rally the faithful under the banner of a new name. Scum? Dregs? The future is ours. All we need is a charismatic leader. Mick Philpott is sadly unavailable.