Bonfire of the Establishment

In September 1955 The Spectator’s political commentator, Henry Fairlie, coined a term to describe the way in which Britain works which has been used ever since. The ‘Establishment’, he said, was the real mechanism through which power was exercised in this country. The elites of the business, political and media worlds wielded power via a ‘matrix of official and social relations’, which varied from the banks to the director-general of the BBC to ‘divinities’ such as Violet Bonham Carter (Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury). The social and economic upheavals of the following decades only caused this Establishment to regenerate. But it has never faced an existential threat — until now.

The Establishment is in chaos. Financiers are still being routed, as the recent Barclays upheaval shows. Politicians are being found guilty of breaking laws: Chris Huhne’s predicament is remarkable only because of his fairly recent status as a Cabinet member. The sight of politicians being put behind bars is no longer unusual in Britain: six have been sent to prison in the last three years.