Aristocracy
Jul. 15th, 2014 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloButler-Sloss has stood down from the Abuse Inquiry and quite right too.
And her successor? Trouble is the establishment can't imagine employing anyone in a role like this who wasn't at school with them- or their sisters- or who doesn't attend their parties. This isn't a dig at the establishment we have at the moment- ghastly though it is- because all establishments are much the same- inward looking, defensive, nepotistic- held together by patronage, intermarriage and money. There are, no doubt, wonderfully capable public servants in places like Rotherham and Carlisle who could do the Sloss job admirably but they don't enter into the reckoning because May and Cameron and their Whitehall mandarins won't ever have heard of them.
We have a political system whereby high office runs in families and clans. Sloss, for example, is the daughter of a High Court Judge and the sister of a former Lord Chancellor. The name for this way of managing things- though we're shy of applying it to ourselves- is aristocracy.
And her successor? Trouble is the establishment can't imagine employing anyone in a role like this who wasn't at school with them- or their sisters- or who doesn't attend their parties. This isn't a dig at the establishment we have at the moment- ghastly though it is- because all establishments are much the same- inward looking, defensive, nepotistic- held together by patronage, intermarriage and money. There are, no doubt, wonderfully capable public servants in places like Rotherham and Carlisle who could do the Sloss job admirably but they don't enter into the reckoning because May and Cameron and their Whitehall mandarins won't ever have heard of them.
We have a political system whereby high office runs in families and clans. Sloss, for example, is the daughter of a High Court Judge and the sister of a former Lord Chancellor. The name for this way of managing things- though we're shy of applying it to ourselves- is aristocracy.
