Waiting for the Etonians: Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England

Selected writings from one of the most important commentators of our generation covering the wreckage of Labour's 10 year love affair with the Right BY THE SUMMER of 2007, Britain was close to crashing. A few onlookers realised the danger, but Britain's political leaders were not among them. Politicians and civil servants boasted that the City's economy was booming because of their 'light-touch regulation' of workers in financial services whose number included potential frauds. Curiously, they never argued that the inner-city economy might boom if there was 'light touch regulation' of workers in the ghettos whose number included potential drug dealers.And artists produced works to match the times. On the same day that Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, the genial Damien Hirst auctioned at Sotheby's pieces he admitted had been mass produced in his studios and buyers still gave him GBP100 million. Even the critics did not pretend to be interested in what message, if any, Hirst had for his au