We know whom to blame for our bad situation – and they are few enough to name, if not quite close enough to land our custard pies on. Country and provincial- town dwellers complain of a metropolitan elite, so ensconced in the big city's artificial prosperity they ignore the plight of other regions. Reformers blame stagnant or falling social mobility on the influence of ‘elite schools’, passing on cultural advantage generationally under a false impression of merit. Even once- revered elite sports stars are under suspicion for the substances they took on the way to the top. Donald Trump's election as US president and UK voters’ decision to leave the EU reflect the failure of ‘elites in both parties to speak to the sense of disempowerment that we see in much of the middle class’ according to public philosopher Michael Sandel (Cowley 2016).

In Middle Eastern and former Soviet countries, citizens have risen to challenge military and business elites, and their long- held claim to be upholding a national integrity that was incompatible with democracy. Peoples granted ‘independence’ in the twentieth century bemoan their postcolonial path under a ruling elite that often grew rich rather faster than they did, often tracing the problem to the inequalities, arbitrary borders and inappropriate institutions bequeathed by a departing Western elite. Longer- established democracies in the United States and Europe appear no less vulnerable to the sudden rise of ‘grass- roots’ protest, which incumbents dismiss as populist but which voters greet voicing grievances that elites had long silenced. Opponents once silenced by the appearance of democracy and meritocracy are now in full cry against elites’ ability to stay on top by rigging the labour- market competition (Reeves 2017), twisting welfarestate arrangements to their own benefit (Hayes 2012) and tuning the political machine to their own preferences (Gilens & Page 2014), partly by tying their economic interests to those of the better- off groups above them (Bartels 2008 29– 126), helped by their control of biased media (Chomsky 2002). The counter- cry is muted. Former supporters conceded long ago that societies’ most privileged have ‘lost touch with the people’ (Lasch 1996: 3), succumbing to self- interest and forgetting the social duties once attached to great wealth and political power.