From Shopkeepers to PowerPoint Peasants

Once upon a time, the dream of the British worker was simple: escape wage slavery and hang out your own shingle. A shop, a van, a bit of kit in the back of a lock-up. You might not make a fortune, but it was yours. You set the prices, picked the hours, and swore at the government without checking over your shoulder for HR.

This, lest we forget, was what prompted Bonaparte to dismiss us – with more than a tinge of envy – as a "nation of shopkeepers". He meant it as an insult. It was, in fact, a compliment. We were economically stubborn, fiercely independent, and utterly ungovernable – a patchwork of small traders who owed fealty to no man but their accountant.

But that’s all gone now. Killed off not by foreign conquest or plague, but by a slow and sapping shift to a service economy – an endless grey sprawl of ‘customer success managers’ and ‘senior synergy consultants’, all working 60-hour weeks to pay for the privilege of not owning a bloody thing.

The modern middle class – if it even qualifies for the term – no longer owns a shop. It doesn’t even own its tools. It rents software by the month and logs into Teams to serve someone else’s dream. The cobbler’s hammer has been replaced by a login ID. The butcher’s block by a spreadsheet. The publican’s bell by the Outlook calendar alert.

What we’re left with is a generation of high-earning, highly-strung professionals who have all the trappings of success – the house (mortgaged to the hilt), the car (leased), the clothes (ironed by someone else) – but no sovereignty. They’re not middle class. They’re corporate vassals. PowerPoint peasants.

And woe betide anyone who dares leave the plantation. Try opening a small café, or a high street shop, or even a mobile valeting business – and see how fast the red tape wraps itself around your ankles. We’ve gone from building empires of our own to defending KPIs for empires that wouldn’t notice if we vanished overnight.

I spotted this enterprising business on a recent trip to Bridport.

 What a brilliant idea - a mobile barbershop. No quartet though, which was rather sad.

The middle class of old was self-employed, self-respecting, and self-reliant. Today’s version is salaried, sanitised, and spiritually spent.

Welcome to the age of middle-class servitude – where we swapped the till for the Teams call, and now answer not to customers, but to compliance.