Owen Jones takes on the establishment in this impassioned polemic against the powers that be. The Guardian columnist explores the political injustice of British democracy, leading us from the boardrooms of Bishopsgate to the corridors of Whitehall and the newsrooms of Fleet Street. All the while, arguing that the establishment poses the greatest threat to democracy today. Jones defines the establishment as “the politicians who make laws; media barons who set the terms of debate; businesses and financiers who run the economy and police forces that enforce a law which is rigged in favour of the powerful.” In doing so, Jones argues that the modern-day establishment is even more powerful than its predecessors because of it’s acceptance of a neoliberal cross-party consensus.
Archie Bland of the Independent is impressed with Jones’s powerful polemic. He maintains that “the book’s great strength lies in the simple power of accumulation. Again and again, Jones connects the dots in parallel lines, so that the single examples that might in themselves be dismissed as circumstantial or overblown become more or less unanswerable”. Bland also praises Jones for “his position as the standard-bearer of a youthful alternative to Westminster’s suffocating consensus”. Since being dubbed “our generation’s Orwell” by Russell Brand, Jones’s political leverage has continued to grow. In turn, Bland argues that “this book will strengthen that group’s hope to build what you might see as an alternative establishment of their own”.
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