Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In a generous post last week, the prime orchestrator of the UK's blogland, Iain Dale of Politco's Bookshop and now Iain Dale's Diary - the only man to have made a success of two enterprises with apostrophes - wondered if OurKingdom would become "the first left of centre blog to make a breakthrough" (I think he means into becoming a blog that matters and has some influence). He noted that it is "fast becoming a daily read for me" and we will do our best to get ourselves inscribed in his blogroll of honour, "Dale's Daily Reads" (that apostrophe, you can't escape it). The reason for the post itself was a response to my speculation about class war inside the Tory party, which came into public view when Ancram broke cover and crashed like a fat, noisy grouse into Cameron's hunting party just when they were looking for the Labour fox. Dale tells a funny story about class consciousness in the Labour Party but that was local rather than at the national level. His first comment came from a reader who reminded us of the saying that the Tory party was "once the party of landed estates but is now the party of estate agents".
That must originally have been coined by someone who inherited their loot. Now, the landed estates are back, have made the long march through the advertising agencies and boy can that rankle!
