The New Few, or A Very British Oligarchy: Power and Inequality in Britain Now by Ferdinand Mount - review by Nick Cohen

Nick Cohen

The Haves and the Have-Some-Mores

The New Few, or A Very British Oligarchy: Power and Inequality in Britain Now

By

Simon & Schuster 305pp £18.99
 

If you want to imagine the Prime Minister at seventy, gaze on the features of his cousin at several removes, Sir William Robert Ferdinand ‘Ferdie’ Mount, 3rd Baronet, of Wasing, and one-time adviser to Margaret Thatcher. As so often, distant relatives look more like each other than close kin. To a disconcerting degree, Cameron and Mount share the same moonish face, the same soft skin and contented look. 

Not the smallest of the good lessons The New Few teaches is that appearances deceive. This is not the book of a contented man but of a genuine Tory radical. Modern right-wing ‘radicals’ are meant to believe in passing public services to private monopolies, cutting corporation tax and the top

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