The pretty village of Tarporley in Cheshire ought, in some minds, to be the boiling crucible of class conflict in Britain. But to the dismay of Labour, and the Tories’ delight, it has refused to co-operate.

In the build-up to tomorrow’s by-election in Crewe & Nantwich, Labour has sought to portray Edward Timpson, 34, the Conservative candidate, who lives a few miles from the village, as “the Tarporley Toff”, a Hooray Henry from an “excessively privileged” background.

Labour activists have stalked Mr Timpson wearing top hats, bow-ties and tails, and the Labour campaign has focused on his home (a mansion house worth an estimated £1.5 million), his family fortune (£53 million, from the eponymous chain of shoe repair shops) and even the llamas in the fields beside his home (“exotic, South American”, and thus, presumably, elitist).

Mr Timpson does not fit the mould imposed on him: he went to state school before going on to board at Uppingham School in Rutland, his work as a barrister has concentrated on family law and protection of children at risk, the llamas are not his, and nor is the land they graze on. Oh, and he does not live in Tarporley, but in the village of Kelsall, six miles away.

Labour’s attempt to stir up old class animosities has not only failed, it has backfired spectacularly. Polls suggest that the Tories hold at least an eight-point lead in the constituency left empty by the death last month of the veteran Labour MP Gwyneth Dunwoody, who held the seat at the last election with a 7,000-vote majority.

In Tarporley, the issue of class is regarded with mirth. This part of Cheshire has been described as “footballers’ wives’ country”. Certainly it has its share of Range Rovers, and there are boutiques and speciality chocolate shops in the high street. A shooting supplies shop offers videos on The Etiquette of Grouse Shooting. “Welcome to Barbour country” reads the sign outside.

Andy Wright, the street cleaner, is more concerned about the pile of cigarette butts in the gutter (Tarporley has been named Cheshire’s best-kept village six times) than the educational background and financial status of the Tory candidate. When I ask if he has heard of the Tarporley Toff, he merely giggles.

“There are no airs and graces around here,” says Charles Hardy, owner of the Old Fire Station Chocolate Shop. “And if there are, Edward Timpson is the last person who would have them.”

“We are a two-tier society in Tarporley, like other places in the country,” says Bob Wade, the village butcher, a character straight out of central casting with an unfeasibly red and round face, traditional apron, and a tie. “There’s a working-class aspect to this place that doesn’t tend to be remembered, but we embrace everybody here. I think the whole Tory Toff thing is just a bit of comedy really.”

Perhaps more surprisingly, the rhetoric of class division has also failed to stir voters in the once solidly Labour blue-collar areas of Crewe, still a railway town where Margaret Thatcher is remembered bitterly for the loss of 10,000 railway jobs.

“I don’t really care how much money he has,” says Sheila Mackay, a part-time care worker. “I want to know who is going to bring some new jobs to Crewe.”

Mr Timpson, sensibly, has said little in response to the attacks, to avoid putting his foot in a mouth that his opponents insist had a silver spoon in it at birth. Instead, Labour’s tactics are winning the battle for him.

The indifference to Labour’s campaign will delight David Cameron (Eton and Oxford), suggesting, as it does, that the issue of privilege and family background no longer stirs the passions it once did.

Visiting a Crewe railyard last week, Mr Cameron said that he did not “think people want to judge you on your background” — by which he meant he did not want people to judge him by his background. “Labour likes looking back, they like class division, they like class war.”

It is surely a sign of changing times when the accusation of stirring up class divisions is more powerful than those divisions themselves.

Labour’s mistake may simply have been to focus on an old-fashioned sort of caricature. A recent paper by David Muir, the Downing Street director of political strategy, found that the Tory image of which voters are most wary is not the Etonian in his topper, but the estate agent or glib PR executive, selling snake oil and getting rich on the proceeds. If Mr Timpson’s detractors had worn pinstripes and Brylcreem the message of undeserved wealth might have resonated more effectively.

The London mayoral election suggested that while Ken Livingstone’s attempts to portray Boris Johnson as a posh dilettante worked in inner cities, white working-class voters were unimpressed.

To many, Labour’s efforts to paint the Conservative as “Tory Boy Timpson” and “Lord Snooty” seem redolent of another age. The leaflet spoofing the Tory candidate’s application form — Question 2: “Do you think regeneration is putting another wing on your mansion” — marked a new low in political humour.

“A toff? So what? And anyway he has less land than we do,” says Benjamin Bates, a taxi driver who lives next door to Mr Timpson. “His mother fostered 80 kids. She was always there at the school gate. These are really good people.”

If Mr Timpson wins, it will be the first Conservative by-election gain from Labour in 30 years. But it may also mark a wind of social, as well as political change; the moment when class politics ceased to matter. In that case, Tarporley might be able to add a new plaque to add to its best-kept village awards: “On this spot, class war failed to break out: May 22, 2008.”

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