Small Men on the Wrong Side of History: The Decline, Fall and Unlikely Return of Conservatism

by Ed West

Envy-avoiding is good, and people with money should be ashamed to show it off, since ‘Resentment is the equilibrating device that keeps the society of strangers in balance, by punishing those who offend the laws of solidarity and rewarding, through its absence, those who contribute to the common good.’10 Many conservatives dislike confiscatory taxes but we still feel uncomfortable with people displaying grotesque levels of wealth, and the fact there is no stigma to it. During the Blair years this got much worse, the whole obsession with bling and footballers who thought they were in hip-hop videos. One IT girl, I seem to remember, spent a million pounds on a bath tub, and yet none of these rich idiots attracted the sort of public hostility that occasional high-profile tabloid scroungers did; you certainly never heard much from big-C conservatives on this issue. It was hard not to be a bit disgusted by the amount of money on display, but at least the taxes were rolling in, and people in the City seemed to know what they were doing.