PATRONISING BASTARDS: How the Elites Betrayed Britain

The Parliamentary sketch writer and theatre critic for the Daily Mail loves gossip as well as hymn-singing and cricket. His target is the plotters and schemers, the "technocrats who dehumanise our country's institutions". Western capitalism's élites are bemused - Brexit, Trump and maybe more eruptions to follow. Hillary Clinton calls the ingrates 'A basket of deplorables'; Tony Blair thought voters too thick to understand the question. Wigged judges stared down their legalistic noses at the pongy populace. Those people who know best, those snooterati with their faux-liberal ways are the Patronising Bastards. Their downfall is largely of their own making - their Sybaritic excesses, an obsession with political correctness, the prolonged rape of reason and rite. You find these show-ponies not just in politics and the old institutions, but also in high fashion, football, clean-eating foodies and where celebritydom hires PR smoothies to massage reputations and mislead, distort and twist. Political columnist Quentin Letts identifies these condescending creeps and their networks, their methods and their dubious morals and kebabs them like mutton. He is juicy on Richard Branson, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Dan and Jon Snow, Sadiq Khan, Michael Eavis, Bono, Fiona Millar, Shami Chakrabarti, Nicholas Serota, Jean-Claude Juncker and his chapters include Boaty McVolteface, Cordon Bleuh, Harmful Harriet, Corporate Balls, Dismal Dons, and Top 100 Patronising Bastards. Shockingly hilarious. Fun images too (page 44), 305pp.