Crewe Junction

Top marks to Jon Sopel of the BBC News channel for his opening question to Labour's candidate in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election: "How's the class war going?"

Tamsin Dunwoody, for it is she, was briefly non-plussed by the query, prompted by her party's campaign highlighting the relative affluence of her Conservative opponent Edward Timpson.

"We have a candidate opposing us who lives in a one and a half million pound mansion," Ms Dunwoody, late of the Welsh Assembly, said during a live interview.

That sum would barely buy a wing of Tony and Cherie Blair's latest purchase, a country house once home to Sir John Gielgud. Labour are branding Mr Timpson a toff, employing activists dressed up in top hat and tails to greet him in the constituency.

Cherie Blair's memoirs make much of her humble origins, although her husband went to Fettes - "the Scottish Eton" - which probably makes him a toff in Labour circles.

David Cameron and Boris Johnson have had to downplay their own schooling at Eton for political reasons. Visitors to Britain might think it slightly strange that some parents fork out tens of thousands of pounds buying what they think is the best education you can get, only for the beneficiaries to feel the need to distances themselves from it.

A campaign leaflet stoked up the class war. At least Labour aren't using the by-election to rail against the hereditary principle - probably just as well as Tamsin is the daughter of two Labour MPs and the grandaughter of a Labour general secretary and a member of the House of Lords.

The full list of by-election candidates, should you be interested, can be seen here.

If all this talk of old school ties is making you nostalgic, read this inspiring story about someone who had the misfortune to teach me at (comprehensive) school.