This week Iain Duncan Smith finally turned his back on the media/political class

There are many symptoms of contemporary decline from the healthy and robust democratic politics of the mid-20th century. They include the death of public oratory, the rise of the leadership cult and the use of mass-advertising techniques to manipulate voters. But most telling of all is the rise of a narrow, exclusive, metropolitan elite of political technocrats.

It is impossible to get to grips with modern politics without understanding the ubiquity of this phenomenon. In the case of New Labour, its presiding symbol is the Downing Street director of communications, Alastair Campbell, and the scores of cronies and ‘special advisers’ who congregate around government ministers. They have been responsible for many of the least attractive features of the Blair government: its deceptions, smear campaigns and character assassinations, carried out mainly through a collaborationist political press.

This new caste is rapidly coming to wield more power and exercise more influence than elected politicians.