Matthew Parris
Who Runs the Show?
The Establishment – And How They Get Away with It
By Owen Jones
Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 358pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
So it’s all a big stitch-up by the rich and powerful, dutifully serenaded by craven politicians and crazed ideologues?
Scrawled in the margins of my copy of The Establishment – And How They Get Away with It are my angry protests, double-underlinings with ‘No! No!’ beside them and inky shouts of ‘Rubbish!’, ‘Cop-out!’ and ‘This is an intellectual disgrace!’ At one point, and most damningly, appears, ‘Feels like a 320-page Guardian op-ed’.
But as the book proceeds my scribbly storm abates. Obviously, Owen Jones (famous first for Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, and for years now a perceptive and coldly furious voice from the Left) is all over the place. His analysis is a catastrophe. His thoughts are a mess.
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