"What do they know? They don't live on the estate"

What really killed the left, I think, was when it moved up-market. Back in the days when middle-class kids turned lefty by way of pretending to "join" the working class, those kids may have been silly, but now it's middle-class kids turning lefty to reaffirm the fact that they're privileged, college-educated "intellectuals". There's also a leavening of working-class kids kids joining for the sake of cultural upward mobility: Leftist radicalism is a quick and easy way to pass for middle class, if you're from the wrong side of the tracks. In college that can mean a lot. And that's how you get a bozo like Ted Rall bragging about how leftists like him are superior to the working class, because he makes more money and buys better consumer goods.

And you get this report via Norm Geras about some folks from Respect/SWP/whatever calling the actual working class (or poor, or whatever) "class traitors" for... wanting better housing? Hard to be sure; it seems the SWP showed up somewhere to act as the Voice of the Downtrodden, but the actual Downtrodden showed up too, with their own voice, and the SWP told them to shut the hell up and not interrupt their betters.