The Establishment is dead. But something worse has replaced it

The Spectator political commentator Henry Fairlie, in his column of 23 September 1955, famously identified the Establishment as the mechanism through which power was exercised in this country. His analysis, though at once recognised as authentic, was written as the British Establishment was about to collapse. Today it enjoys some residual notoriety (manifest through former ruling-class institutions such as White’s Club) but no political significance.