IT doesn’t seem as if we’ve quite got the measure of events this week - that we’ve failed to grasp the wider significance of what’s happening in Britain. Yes, Boris Johnson is waiting in the anteroom to political oblivion; and yes, the Royal family is facing ruin over Prince Andrew. But these aren’t separate, discreet incidents. They tie together into one larger story - filled with an array of loathsome characters and shameful events - which tell a wider tale: the crumbling of the British establishment.
Not since the 1960s and the days of the Profumo Scandal have the powers-that-be trembled so. That invisible structure within which we all live - the nexus of power and elitism which shapes British life - is tottering. The terror within the establishment is such that it’s now cannibalising itself: Tory turning on Tory, Royal eating Royal.
Finally, the cheerleaders of the British establishment see what the rest of us knew all along: power in Britain has been built and maintained by those who’ve always held us in contempt. The establishment’s cheerleaders were just too high on empire, flags, nostalgia, tradition and pomp to see clearly. Perhaps, now they’ll join the rest of us in modernity.
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