The TUC’s new Middlebritainometer (widgeted below) shows you how close (or not) you are to middle income Britain. Give it your income and it will quite possibly give you a surprise!

Certain sections of the media are very fond of talking about Middle Britain, portraying an aspirational group of happy Mondeo drivers as the very core of society. This is something of a fiction though, and the new Life In The Middle pamphlet shows how British society has moved in recent history from a sort of diamond shape, clustered around median income with some poorer and a comparable number richer, tapering off in both directions.

Now it’s all gone (literally) pear-shaped. The median has fallen downwards in the overall income scale, with the working poor better off in recent years, but the middle quintile slumped around the £20,000pa mark, and professionals and the super-rich stretching off much further at the top of the graph.

It’s easy to see why the media keep up this fiction – portraying people who are actually well into the top quintile as being pretty much average. Ad revenue is much easier to come by if a paper appears to be focused towards a majority who are in imminent need of interior design, health supplements and new motors.

Politicians should think twice about taking the Daily Mail’s view of Middle Britain though. Thatcher and Blair both won by winning over Middle Income Britain, but this group hasn’t profited much from their choices in the last 30 years. Wooing them either for the next election will mean understanding them and taking their (interestingly pretty progressive) opinions on board with at least as much attention as is being lavished on the top quintile.