For some reason I receive Daily Telegraph headlines every morning on the internet. I don’t remember ever ordering them; perhaps a data mining company somewhere thought I was the sort of bloke to welcome them. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica. Incidentally: isn’t it interesting that so many of the Cambridge Analytica gang were Old Etonians?) I’m also getting daily – even hourly – US stock market tips from somewhere – a sort of investors’ club, I think – which don’t interest me either.

Except that both are giving me an insight into the minds of the middling members of the Tory and Republican parties; not necessarily the leaders, or the lumpenproletariat, but the bourgeoisie which is the parties’ solidest base. With all that’s going on in the world, the Telegraph chooses nearly every day to headline (or is this just in the electronic version?) money issues, and especially house prices, interest rates, private school fees, and personal  tax. (These, and its ‘Puzzle’ section, of which it seems inordinately proud.) In other words, Tories seem to be interested only in their pockets; as obviously do all those middle-class Americans eager to make money for nothing, and seeking investment tips on line. (Many of them, by the way, are more worried than you might think about Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, which is beginning to feature on my stock market site.)

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In Britain’s case, of course, this was encouraged by Margaret Thatcher’s great reforming government of the ’80s, which encouraged people to think only in ‘market’ terms. One of her most fervent disciples was Eric (now Lord) Pickles: a Tory city councillor for Bradford during Thatcher’s premiership, then MP for Brentwood from 1992, and a cabinet minister in various roles from 2007-on; in all these roles concerned mainly to save government or council money. Pickles is stereotypically Yorkshire, of the ‘plain-speaking’ ‘Yorkshire and proud of it’ type; and very – shall we say – chubby. (There’s a pic of him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Pickles.) He was probably chosen as a minister by David Cameron because of these attributes; fat plain-speaking plebs who haven’t been to Public School or Oxbridge are in short supply in the upper levels of the parliamentary Conservative Party. (Pickles was educated at Leeds Polytechnic.) I, as a Yorkshire denizen – but not, thank God, West Yorkshire – know the sort. They can be a pain in the proverbial *rse. – (Incidentally: the Tories go on a lot about ‘wokery’; but if ‘woke’ meant saving money, I bet they’d go for it.)

Pickles’ name has come up recently in connexion with the horrendous Grenfell fire of June 2017 in North Kensington, which was largely blamed on cost-cutting under his aegis as Minister for Local Government prior to that. (The scale of the fire was due to its cheap cladding: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire.) At a recent Government Inquiry into the fire he showed his true colours – or priorities – by testily complaining that he was missing a dinner date. (It can be seen on Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAKGEYuvBzo – 1 minute in.) Yet it was after this that he was elevated to the Lords.