Lots of things! Well, maybe not the war bit, but – assuming there is decent mobility within it – class seems to have many, many good points.

1 An interest in it does at least mean you’re interested in other people. The British might have always been suspicious of philosophy, abstract thought and rigid ideologies, but most of them will happily dissect the significance of pints versus halves, open-collars versus ties and scon versus scoan for days.

2 It can promote stability and virtuous public-spirited actions. The officer class - committed to the value of self-sacrifice for country, cause or corps can be very powerful. In more tribal times such a class might have meant survival for one tribe over another. The same applies to collective decisions about deserving charity cases, self-policing communities and preserving traditions.

3 Obviously it can be useful for explaining failure and achievement to oneself. And for making you feel at home, even if it does make them feel uncomfortable.

4 It can help to explain you to yourself. Sort of. Thinking, for example, “He brings out the inverted snob in me,” or “I’m just so useless and middle class in those situations”, may not seem like profound self-analysis, but in fact it involves understanding your emotions in social and psychological contexts.

5 And in a through-the-looking-glass way, it is fundamental to the great British desire to throw off inhibitions and be modern. Politicians denounce it to get us excited, yet the most fun we have is when we are in places where the classes are mixed and mingling. This is a key element of the all the positive moments in 20th century British social history. One suspect resident of 2e Camstrat Villas says we like mingling because all British classes believe the other classes have more sex than their own, but we are too middle class to get into that.

But why should business be interested in this?

When we laugh in recognition at Alan Bennett’s stories about his mam’s ideas about consumer durables; when we choose a different drink because of the company we’re in; when we’re really not jealous – that car really does make him seem a showoff – then we are navigating with values that are not to do with money or personal gratification.

We are dealing with acquired, collectively-felt emotions that feel like instincts. Emotions that make us want, and choose to buy certain things.

How can business not be interested in that?

Isn’t class subsumed in marketing strategies?

Well, it ought to a part of them, but very few marketing strategies take people from a segment and consider their feelings about other people in that segment. How does this person feel when they are around people like them? And people unlike them?

In fact, in many markets these feelings are of paramount importance. Not just the ones that vaguely use class as a marketing tactic – bitter brands, for example, or insurance, Pot Noodle, tea – that’s obvious. But how can the appeal of football be understood without this? Or restaurant chains? Marks and Spencer?

Whether the little sugar rush of consumer-joy comes from mingling with different sorts of people, or from being with people like you, or from a sense that you are transcending class (Virgin, Easyjet, Tesco) the point remains that there is something here that combines the social and the personal in a non-rational way. Something that doesn’t make it into strategy because it’s hard to measure. Something that becomes rich and easy to discuss if you imagine what Hyacinth Bucket or Alan Bennett would make of it all.

Interestingly, the most significant consumer brand of them all, Tesco, does not segment by class or ability to pay, but by lifestage. Is understanding lifestage THE key to volume sales then? The key is certainly not just price – if it were, then Lidl, Aldi and Netto would have had the success they once predicted for themselves.

Strange, isn’t it, that we vaguely assume ourselves to be freer and less bound by our work and class than our parents? Are we really?

Isn’t our new homogenous culture of water-cooler moments, Ricky Gervais’ The Office, Friday night after-work drinks, long working hours, personal development and meetings meetings meetings as stultifying in its own way as the typing pool or the pin-striped 9-5 used to be?

Could we even be MORE enslaved to the idea of our holy career than our parents were? This might not be an accident. As MPs and ministers have become more middle class, so the range of models for wealth-generating work and satisfying life has shrunk to one – education-driven careerism. (Are we alone in longing for a world where plumbers earn more then solicitors?) Remember, the process of government has been adapted to fit into conventional working hours, which means that far fewer MPs now enter The House with any significant experience of actual business or work. And looking at them, you doubt they have much experience of, or regard for, anyone whose pleasure and satisfaction lies outside promotions and pay packets.

We don’t want to sound like Primark Puritans ourselves, but a CSC colleague recently suggested to us that the debilitating effects of exposure to the lifestyles of the rich and shameless as entertainment should not be underestimated.

He grew up on a poor council estate in Hackney. In the 1970s, he said, the kids were pissed off because they were poor. Now the kids are much less poor, but they are still pissed off because the endless exposure to the glossy lives of the super rich made them think that whatever self improvement they could achieve felt meaningless.

This can even apply to the middle classes; your £50,000 saving and half million pound house, which in global terms makes you incredibly wealthy, seem insignificant after a flick through the Sunday Times Rich List.

We used to have achievable ambitions to move into the class above us that felt meaningful; a nice kitchen, being able to carry off a conversation with the officers, regular holidays. Now, as the class above loses its lustre in the glare from Victoria Beckham’s mirror-shades, ‘achievable’ and ‘meaningful’ have separated out.

This surely has serious implications for any business selling aspiration. Unless you believe that the whole notion of aspiration will change with the rise of the

“We want nothing of a world in which the certainty of not dying from hunger comes in exchange for the risk of dying from boredom,” ran the old 1968 slogan.

We are a bit less dramatic about such things these days, but during the recent age of affluence, a species of thinking came back. Many of us could afford to ask; in an age when the basic needs are more easily available, when I have enough stuff – what do I want then?

The answers we came up with – more holidays? Giving to charity? A 4x4 to go off-roading with? - were signifiers of some new emergent classes that were governed by lifestyle choice rather than basic socio-economics.

Mind you, in a new age when, er, basic needs are less easily available, this thinking is suddenly a lot less common. Those who talk about realising their full potential suddenly sound less like rounded human beings and more like someone who’s just been fired.

Of course it’s always a convincing justification for “downsizing”.

Now, is it us, or does this talk of downsizing and getting fired, remind you of a point in the recent past?

1992 New prime minister promising return to substance and common sense.
2008 New prime minister promising return to substance and common sense.

1992 New Chancellor with spooky eyebrows and lack of confidence-inspiring ability
2008 New Chancellor with spooky eyebrows and lack of confidence-inspiring ability

1992 EU economics making what seemed fairly sound economy suddenly look very shakey
2008 Global economics making what seemed fairly sound economy suddenly look very shakey

1992 Victory in Iraq seeming a bit pointless
2008 Victory in Iraq seeming a bit non-existent

1992 Take That
2008 Take That

1992 Deng Xiaoping announces market reforms to create a socialist market economy
2008 Fancy that eh?

As the disconnected-connected divide shows, there’s nothing wrong with simplistic binary-ness sometimes.

Whichever class you are in seems dominant, and richly sub-divisible; the upper class will be keenly aware of the difference between viscount, baronet, lord, wealthy landowner and so on; the working class of the lines between skilled labourer, semi-skilled and foreman, the grades between personable and common. And yet we find it hard to believe that other classes, particularly those above us, can be sub-divided.

It is sometimes argued that the poor and the rich see only two classes, and it is only the middle that believes there are three.

One reason contemporary class can be difficult to discuss is that historically we associate certain classes with certain income levels and certain political parties.

It’s important to realise that these traditional associations are disintegrating. Those born after the decline of trade union power are likely to need the traditional voter bases explaining to them. For them, entrepreneurialism is not seen as belonging to the right.

Are green politics of the left or the right? Where do you put Tamsin Ormond leading prayers which ask God to “help us stop the consumption”?

Meanwhile watch out for people, generally middle-aged ex-hippies, who try to use the global warming crisis to create a spirit of togetherness. Al Gore, for example, says we are “privileged” to have “a generational mission; the exhilaration of a compelling moral purpose; [and] a shared and unifying cause.” Rosie Boycott has directly compared her generation’s experience of climate change to her mother’s in World War Two. Hmm.

Every age has a class that convinces society of its indispensable service, and then converts that service into power (feudal lords used armies, 18/19th century industrialists used money and employment, 1950s-1980s unions used Labour, corporate class used communications, knowledge and information). and finds a way to play the system so that it extracts bigger reward while decreasing its exposure to risk.

The new upper managerial class – quintessentially that of American investment banks – is partly a creation of the stock-option culture, which has closed the old gap between manager and owner. The class is still relatively undiscussed in the media, yet has been superceding the aristocracy/upper class in terms of wealth and culture; it has colonised The Season (through corporate sponsorship) and buying its property, while, crucially, avoiding its social responsibility.

How will they fare in the downturn? It’s a two horse race between them and the new professional, politician class as to whose most insulated themselves from risk at our expense, with the winners being our new overlords for the next few decades.

We couldn’t signoff without acknowledging the marketing middles - Perhaps the quintessential 21st century profession – since we no longer manufacture anything, but instead figure out how to get other people to buy stuff other people have made.

The question is, given that there are so many of us doing it, why do we insist on seeing “people” as less smart and more predictable than we are?

Perhaps we should ask that sub-group who seem to think they know everything – the class-obsessed consultants.