The Establishment - And how they get away with it.


by Owen Jones (2014)

In this book, Owen Jones sets out to expose the way in which the wealthy and the powerful protect their interests at the expense of the rest of us and to this end, he produces a wealth of pretty convincing evidence.  Admittedly he sometimes puts slightly more contentious assertions into the mouths of his interviewees, and leaves these assertions hanging without any serious discussion, but all in all the welter of first hand testimony and argument leave one in little doubt that he has a pretty strong case.

Of course, events have rather taken over since 2014, but Jones in describing the immediate history, goes a long way to explain the current confusions of, for example, Brexit and the rise of populist politics, elucidating as he does the ambivalent nature of the Establishment's relationship to Europe and shining a light on quite why so much of the electorate are so utterly fed up with the previously indistinguishable political parties.

I'd say his analysis is pretty sound, but would need to think further about his proposed solutions as described in the final chapter, as I am quite sure these are problematic in their own right. 

Entirely for being a bit of a slog, I can only give it a 7/10.

Rating 7/10.


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