THE INDEPENDENT – AN EXTRACT: We're governed by the political wing of the wealthy. That's not the view of a Socialist Worker headline writer: it's mainstream public opinion. According to a poll for The Independent earlier this week, two out of three voters think the Tories are "the party of the rich". Inevitably, that's partly because the majority of the Cabinet are privately-educated millionaires who would not look out of place in a 19th-century government. That's why George Osborne (the St Paul's-educated heir to a 17th-century baronetcy) slapping a tax on pasties – popular cheap nosh – strikes such a nerve. "It may sound trivial – but it is becoming symbolic of a divide between working people and a rich elite" – again, not the Socialist Worker, but the otherwise loyal Tory rag, The Sun.
But it goes a lot deeper than the distance between the well-bred kitchen-supper eating Conservatives and the pasty-eating masses. It's the fact that the "Cash for Cameron" scandal has exposed the internal mechanics of how Toryism provides political representation for the upper crust of society, because "the people who remain quietly behind the scenes" have been thrust into the spotlight. Peter Cruddas is now persona non grata as far as Cameron's circle is concerned, but his pledge to "feed all feedback" of wealthy donors "to the policy committee" gives the rest of us an insight into how power works in Cameron's Britain. Read the whole article here » | Owen Jones | Friday, March 30, 2012
