Well it's not UK specicfic but as there's only really workers and owners, they could be insecure about being a slightly better paid worker?

Also, an owner - of a very limited amount. Junior partner, at best.

There are many taxonomies of people. Workers vs owners is one, and relates to the relationship between people and the means of production. Other taxonomies are young vs old, male vs female, and class structures with more than two classes. Notice that this thread has been about social class, more than economic class.

That's one way of looking at it. But there are other ways of slicing and dicing an populace and it's capital.

One point that Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through the American Status System makes over and over (maybe never quite explicitly, but implicitly, throughout) is that Fussell’s “middle class” is essentially defined by being thoroughly pathetic. They’re the most class-concerned, by far, desperately anxious to signal higher class, while having no clue how to correctly do that. An Upper-Middle spots them a mile away, to say nothing of Upper. To Proles, their preferences and behavior are grating or risible. They end up jockeying awkwardly for position only amongst themselves.

Right, the trichotomy in Venkatesh Rao’s Office… was clearly influenced by Fussell (who was in turn inspired by Veblen)

GP indicates another trichotomy- past, future and present orientation..

One good FNORD way to hide is to convince the low the mid are somehow* "elite" and therefore no one need look past them to the high.

(the proles aren't any less status conscious than the outer party; what else could explain tracksuit chic and luxury brand revenue? "Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children.")

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPpjU1UeAo (the video features a nice 20' day sailer, but is a little short on horses)

EDIT: * διαίρει και βασίλευε, known in our times as "let's you and him fight". The brits played this game well during their imperial period, but looking at the world map of frozen (and hot) conflicts, maybe they played it too well.

Convince the present oriented that the future oriented are past oriented?

to the middle class, higher education from a good institution provides skills that ought to prove useful in the future; to the working class, proof of higher education from a good institution is a gate which demonstrates how much free cash flow one's parents had in the past?

(I might assign the labels differently though: working class is future oriented [live in expectation of what you have coming]; upper class is past oriented [live on what you already have]; middle class is present oriented [performative in the now]. The first two are economic; the last social. bien-pensant/What would Mrs. Grundy think?)