Today, England is a classless society where the class struggle is over.
– Tony Blair, idiot, liar, Prime Minister of the UK
And when shall England ever exist without the centrality if not the omnipresence of class. The entirety of English culture, society and even mindset is riven through and through with class. It has been so for centuries, it is so now, despite Tony’s pitiful protestations, and the future of England looks as class-riven as ever, certainly after the Thatcher infection which tragically birthed an entire generation of little monsters called Thatcherites who worship her as a certain type in the US worships Reagan as a secular deity.
The English novel itself cannot seem to get away from class. How can it?
The rich toffs, the circling snobs, the irony, scathing putdowns, snobbery and ridicule – the weapons of self-regard, the dazzling world of entitlement, riches and the ever-present amorality that accompany them, the grasping emptiness, the sadistic gossip, the snobbish privilege, the vapid indolence, the blithe parasitism, the contempt of those who must work with their hands or at all – although most societies have elites – this particular constellation seems to be a peculiarly English disease.
But never mind. History is over. All the clocks have stopped. Tony Blair even said so himself.
