How to buy your way into the British establishment

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[/audioplayer]‘Money has won,’ Martin Amis said this week, promoting his BBC4 programme Martin Amis’s England on telly this Sunday. The class gulf has disappeared, he said, replaced by a money society.

It’s a little more complicated than that. Class differences are still stonkingly obvious in this country, whenever you open your mouth or put your clothes on in the morning. But it’s never been easier, or quicker, to hurtle up the class ladder by the deft application of huge amounts of money.

Britain may still ostensibly be a monarchy, but what it really is is an oligopoly, run by the oligoi — Ancient Greek for the few. And increasingly the oligoi — and not just the Russian oligarchs — are very, very rich indeed.

The old elite, including the monarchy and the political parties, aren’t quite broke yet, but they are desperate to shore up their assets. And the new billionaires on the block have never had so much money to give away, or so many reasons to give it away in return for power, preferment and a seat at the top table.

If you want to eat above the salt, it’s just a question of getting your chequebook out. This week, the Telegraph revealed that the bargain basement starting price is £150,000. That will buy you an EU passport in Bulgaria, and all the rights to work and residency across the EU that come with it.

But money can take you much higher up the batting order than that. Last week, Prince Andrew hosted, and paid for, a dinner at Buckingham Palace for Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, and 20 senior bankers from HSBC, JP Morgan, Barclays and the financial services group ICAP. Last autumn, he hosted another dinner for the American bank JP Morgan at Buckingham Palace.