UK election 2015 Book review special: The Establishment- ‘And how they get away with it.’

Author: Owen Jones
Publisher: Penguin
Released: 4th September 2014


There’s a general election going on in the UK tomorrow; not that it really matters. The people have the choice between more of the same, or more of the same. The only thing up for change is the composition of the political puppets that will appear on our televisions and in our increasingly irrelevant newspapers. We’ll get to blame somebody new perhaps, or maybe we’ll just get to blame the old bloke again.

Yeah, the democratic process in the UK in 2015 is pretty messed up, broken so badly that it’s not even worth engaging with it, and that’s what most people do. They turn the channel, mumble a few curse words at the goon in the suit and watch the football instead. Why bother? They’re all the same. They’re all liars. They’re all in it for themselves.  I tend to agree with that kind of mentality. Why bother when it’s all a con?

And so the democratic process slowly dies, and the rich people who control it remain in power, relying on their repeater voters to trudge down to the local school every four years or so, voting not to make the world a better place, but voting for the same party that Mum and Dad voted for, voting based on fear because the television and newspapers have scared them and more of the same is the best that they can hope for, even though more of the same is killing everything around them, their families, communities and country as a whole.

The fresh faced young author

The Establishment ‘And how they get away with it,’ is a book by that posh young bloke (Owen Jones) who appears on BBC Question Time every now and then. It’s a book from the mainstream point of view, even though it’s supposedly attacking the mainstream. Everything is a coincidence, nothing was planned, and the rigged world that we have found ourselves living in today just needs a bit of reorganisation, a change of a couple of policies here and there, and then everything will be okay.

The story is that in the 1970’s a bunch of academic ideological outsiders (the author calls them ‘the outriders’) kept going on about privatisation, individualism and free market ideas. These ideas were thought of as crazy at the time (by the establishment as it was then) but rich people saw an opportunity, funded the outriders, and got their buddies into political positions where they could put the outriders intellectual justifications into practice in order to massively enrich themselves. The book talks about Thatcher, Reagan, New Labour and the current Cameron led Tories, and how they all share the same neo-liberal ideas that were started by the outriders. The problem now that is that we are living in a neo-liberal world as envisioned by the 1970’s outriders, and it’s bloody horrible, well, unless you are a very rich person or working in the neo-liberal establishment yourself.

What has been created is a world of selfishness, greed, Darwinian survival of the fittest ruthlessness and everything that is potentially wrist cuttingly depressing about the human species. That’s the status quo of 2015, and if you go up against it you are the crazy one, the loon, the person to be shunned by all right thinking people.

Owen Jones spends the book talking to the people who make up what could be loosely termed as the ‘establishment.’ As a whole they are a pretty smug bunch of a*** holes really, and why shouldn’t they be? They’ve won, and it doesn’t look like they have anything to worry about as all opposition to them is fragmented and at a very early stage of development. They own the mainstream media, they own the politicians, they own the banks and corporations, and think tanks, and universities and PR agencies. THEY OWN EVERYTHING.

The current gang of corporate sponsored goons

Their mentality is that of a bloody cartoon villain. They think that ‘All resistance is futile,’ and as I finished up this book I had that sinking feeling that bar a massive bloody, worldwide revolution they may just be right.

Jones details their mountain of spewing corruption, from the university intellectual yes men, the career obsessed politicians and journalists and PR agencies, the revolving doors between politics, finance, regulatory boards, tax cheating, writing the tax laws, then advising on how to get around those laws. He talks about how the Police were used as hired thugs but are no longer important as resistance is declining, and the cops themselves are targets of the neo-liberals now. He talks about the state, and how it is used to finance private interests, and to take the fall when things go badly. He details how the state steals money from the people, handing it over to private corporations, then demanding more and more as the desperate working class youth die in wars of corporate profit, whilst their grand parents die in hospitals that are being purposefully destroyed and prepared for privatisation.

Get those dead paupers out of here. We have some money to make. It’s a nightmare, and the mainstream media is there to give you scapegoats, and to divert your attention from the people really responsible for the dehumanising machine that is rolling over us all. They tell us that it’s the fault of those at the bottom, not those at the top. It’s those immigrants and single mum’s to blame, not the state bailed out banks that were given over a TRILLION pounds in bail-out money in 2008. That nice lady on the television sells the disinformation, with a friendly fake smile on your lonely television. She’s a nice lady, and she wouldn’t lie to you.

Owen Jones could depress for Britain, but what he has detailed here is truth, the harsh truth that our entire mainstream media exists to spread lies and to turn the poor against the poor, shielding real villains from public scrutiny.

With a book so heavy weighed down in its depressing, but awfully true lists of lies aimed against the public (that’s the 99% of us not in the neo-liberal corporate club-house) you need some big ideas, big arguments to leave the book on a high. We already know that the political system is rigged, that’s why we don’t give a crap about this election in 2015, so give us something, give the reader the feeling that things are so unfair, so upside down that things have to change.

I was waiting for that moment to come at the concluding part of the book, but it never really did. What did happen was a list of pitter-patter policy details that could be changed to make things better for us all. These ideas were to be talked about in think tanks, and hopefully they would filter through into the mainstream, much like the outrider’s ideas of the 1970’s.

The ideas themselves are good, but who is going to listen to them? The outrider’s ideas of the 1970’s were useful because they helped to justify the greed of the corporate elites. Why would the ideas that Jones discusses in this book, that talk about a ‘democratic revolution,’ even be listened to? In other words, why would the rich and powerful change what to them is already a perfectly satisfactory situation?

My opinion is that they won’t change, because change doesn’t benefit them. It doesn’t matter how much you talk about fairness and the restoration of the trade unions etc because the very people who would be damaged by these changes OWN EVERYTHING and are going to fight to the death to hold onto what they have.

Same as it ever was.

When these people OWN EVERYTHING the only way that change is going to happen is revolution, when masses of people all over the UK take to the streets and say, no more. Until that day happens, nothing changes. The establishment is too powerful, it OWNS EVERYTHING, and pitter-patter policy changes are not enough.

Writer Owen Jones criticises ‘The Establishment,’ but he himself would be the first to admit that he’s very much a part of it. Like Russell Brand he is surfing that wave of popular discontent, telling us what we already know, but I don’t see any long-term solutions here.

What I have read is a list of grievances, a coincidence narrative (please don’t call me a ‘conspiracy theorist’) and a concluding chapter that tells the working suckers/masses to calm down and to work for change within the already rotten system. It’s a very well researched book, and the information it contains is immense, but what is it really doing? It’s telling us that we have been screwed over, but we already knew that.

What actions can I personally take after reading this book? I can vote, can’t I? Will that change anything? No. So what else can I do? Join a think tank, become a new ‘outrider?’ That’s not enough. I’ve already talked far too much about things, and we are getting to the stage where talk is not enough.

It’s time for action, it’s time to get to the streets, to actually do something, and good as this book is, that is one thing that it is not advocating, and for that reason alone the book isn't quite as 'revolutionary' as you might think. Put this one in the Russell Brand section, and label it as an establishment reaction to what it fears is coming. The information here is valuable, but I can’t see any genuine solutions other than to continue to work within what is already an utterly broken system. It needs to call for a revolution, and it doesn’t do that. The minor changes that it is calling for are all very nice and polite, but the time for being nice and polite is over. It’s time to take things back. The talking has been done. It’s time for action.

Rating: 7/10 (Worth reading for the detailed information on corruption that it contains)