The elite have never been so out of touch

Since the term was coined in 1955 by journalist Henry Fairlie, ‘ establishment’ has meant the elite group of people who rule behind the scenes. Fairlie explained in The Spectator: ‘By the establishment, i do not only mean the centres of official power — though they are certainly part of it — but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised.

‘The exercise of power in Britain cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially.’

Might this explain the present gulf between ordinary people and those who define official thinking on three topics: our relations with Saudi Arabia, the Leon Brittan affair and the delayed chilcot inquiry?

‘Our establishment seems blinded by the glitter of black gold,’ says respected historian Mark Almond, referring to the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister leading the mourning for the late King Abdullah of oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

While David cameron says Abdullah fostered ‘understanding between faiths’, Tory MP Sarah Wollaston points out: ‘ That will ring rather hollow for anyone who wanted to convert to christianity, or even carry a Bible, in Saudi Arabia.’

As for lowering our flags in the late King’s honour, she adds: ‘Half mast for all Saudi women subject to enforced subservience … half mast for all these Saudis and migrant workers publicly beheaded, stoned, subject to judicial mutilation and flogging.’

The Royals, cameron and other apologists for the Saudi regime know the Arab rulers, have socialised with them, and appreciate the billions they spend on our military hardware. Outside the establishment loop, the Saudis are seen as nightmarishly medieval.

isn’t there, likewise, a gulf between establishment thinking on the Leon Brittan affair and the view of the common herd?

Yesterday it was reported that the late Tory Home Secretary — alleged to have covered up for a paedophile ring — is accused of ‘multiple child rape’.

Labour MP and former minister Tom Watson said he’d spoken to a man who said Brittan raped him as a child, a woman who said he’d raped her and that he knew of two other cases.

Yet several senior Tory former colleagues came forward last week to say they did not believe it possible that ‘able, kind, highly intelligent’ Brittan could have been guilty of such crimes.

THe ‘ DOSSIER’ given by the late Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens to Brittan was no more than a couple of letters and a few newspaper clippings, they said. neither the late Dickens, nor Watson, were, or are, establishment figures. Whereas those suggested, and later rejected, as chairs of the inquiry into the allegations against Brittan had establishment connections.

The most obvious ‘ establishment versus the People’ divide concerns the chilcot inquiry into the origins of the iraq War. Why, after seven years, don’t we know when it is coming out?

Because, we’re told, those mentioned — principally ex-PM Tony Blair, and Army chiefs who organised his invasion of iraq — need time to respond to what is being said about them by chilcot. The longer such an inquiry takes, the less public interest it arouses.

if the then PM, Gordon Brown, had wanted chilcot to report quickly he could have given the retired civil servant and his team a time limit.

Such inquiries are establishment ploys. The proceedings are not prosecutorial, whatever conclusions chilcot and his team arrive at. Blair’s crying all the way to the bank however harshly he’s judged.

Father of the House, Tory MP Sir Peter Tapsell, suggested instead that impeachment proceedings should have been brought against Blair for misleading the House, and the country. But what if they had shown that the Tories in Opposition were also massaging the facts in favour of attacking iraqi leader Saddam Hussein?

Tony Blair was certainly hot for going to war and supporting President George W. Bush in 2003. But so were his Tory opponents, then led by iain Duncan Smith.

So, while impeachment proceedings against Blair might have been disastrous for Labour they’re also likely to have exposed the pro-war Tory scheming of that time.

establishments have a social character, as Fairlie said. Members belonging to rival parties talk to each other. They often distrust the instincts of those they rule.