Conservationists battling to protect a row of Victorian villas from the bulldozer have been branded “middle class idiots” by a Birmingham councillor.

It is perfectly possible to be both middle class and an idiot, but one suspects this isn’t quite what councillor Len Clark meant.

Rather, he was suggesting, or assuming, that there was a link between the two attributes.

In other words, he meant that the campaigners in question were idiots – as so many middle class people are. They were idiots precisely because they were middle class, perhaps.

Councillor Clark may very well regret speaking as he did, but who really can blame him for blurting out his true feelings?

John Lennon said that a working class hero is something to be, but it’s hard to imagine any popular singer championing the cause of the middle classes with quite the same fervour.

Indeed, middle class politicians such as Tony Blair have gone to great lengths to hide their origins, effecting estuary accents that make it impossible to tell whether they grew up in a council estate or a nice semi.

Head to Britain’s top universities and you can be sure to find a gaggle of revolutionaries putting their expensive education to good use by planning the proletarian revolution.

They may be middle class themselves, but the idea of standing up for their own rights, let alone those of their parents, would be unspeakably naff.

Coun Clark is not alone in considering middle class to be a term of abuse. And if any residents in his Quinton ward were offended by his comments, there’s a good chance they’ll be far too polite to complain.