We live in a nation where “making money is rather demonised”, James Dyson has told the Daily Telegraph. I don’t feel as though I have ever reached a true appreciation of Dyson as a maker of money: I get bogged down in his more visible role, “maker of vacuum cleaners that are like sliding across your floor, breathing in”; then of course I get in a row with enthusiasts of the wireless Dyson, which is, for people who like that sort of thing, a robot so fine it has its own personal qualities, an R2-D2 of dust. I can never get past the appliances to see the mountain of money they have generated. But then, I could never understand how the Tetra Pak tycoon could afford so much cocaine.

Anyway, I get it: he is very rich, and his smartness is greater than mine by whatever factor his wealth is. I still say he’s wrong about this. We don’t demonise rich people anything like enough. There is a protective cordon around them that predates the right’s idiotic appropriation of the language of prejudice (“you’re discriminating against white men!”) by ages, probably centuries. Eating them, squeezing them till their pips squeak, heaping any hostile attention upon rich people en bloc – even in its glory days, when it sounded quite fun – has the tang of envy, which is less poisonous than, say, race hate, but somehow more shameful. Nobody wants to be that person, who wants someone else’s stuff. In principle, it ought to be at least as embarrassing to suck up to untouchable wealth, just because it smells nice and has beautiful carpets, as it is to be jealous of it. But no.

The problem with the rich is not the people themselves. It’s not the hoarding of wealth; it’s not the tax avoidance or the inequality or the excavation of undersoil so that cars can drive in and out of buildings with no one having to suffer the vulgarity of a pavement. No, the problem is that they are paid far too much attention; the accumulation of money has become an ur-qualification in everything, a PhD in the world. Tell us one about the future, billionaire-sooth? What shall become of the NHS? What’s wrong with young people; why aren’t they the way they used to be? Why do people on benefits not just stop watching Sky and make a million pounds, like what you did? Why did that driverless car kill a lady when they’re not supposed to? What’s going on with the weather? In the age of Mammon, making a packet has a spiritual dimension, bordering on the mystical.

To throw this back upon the rich themselves – who may have personalities as infinitely varied as poor people, but are still only human – it’s impossible to take this much respect without coming to believe you warrant it. Once adulation is yours by right, it must seem like some kind of citizenly abnegation to stick to your own lane. Why be Alan Sugar when you could be Arron Banks? Why be Bill Gates when you could be Elon Musk? Or hell, why would you beat around the bush with a sub-continent or space, when you could be president? So demonise the rich for their own good; liberate them. Bust them back down in your social imagination to the status of people who are unusually good at a particular thing, such as physicists or weavers. “Demon” is such an angry word, but it would be an act of kindness.

There really shouldn’t be so much fuss over Labour’s top job



There are new mumblings about a Labour split, as “centrist” MPs talk about a new party. On paper, it’s because Jeremy Corbyn is a national security risk, though that’s a catch-all idea, vague, subjective and unfalsifiable, like putting “unreasonable behaviour” on your divorce papers.

Beneath it all is the effective appointment of Jennie Formby as general secretary. She is down to a shortlist of two, the other one being Christine Blower, considered a paper candidate for reasons that are blindingly obvious unless you don’t know them and think she seems quite nice.

Resignations are fluttering around Labour HQ like anti-confetti: not-congratulations on your crap decision. You’ve never heard of them, but their departure – John Stolliday, Simon Jackson – is the death knell for “sensible Labour”, apparently. Pro-Formby voices reply that a ton of people resigned when Iain McNicol became general secretary in 2011; and this is apparently a good sign.

Formby may be tough and brilliant, or she may be divisive, and no outsider would ever be able to judge, unless going with the view of the insider you find the most sympatico counts as a judgment.

But anyone can see this should not be an emotional appointment. This job, done right, would be quite boring. It would carry no political clout, being entirely managerial and operational. The ideal candidate, being utterly neutral, would have no pre-existing allegiances other than to the party, neither alienate nor delight anyone and, preferably, have a mild, soporific effect. They would lobby no one, and have no friends on the NEC. They would perform mainly a fire-fighting job, in which the very fires were liable to be tedious. Being a dry, low-conflict personality, with an eye for detail, the successful candidate’s main attribute should be that they urgently don’t want the job, and have to be dragged screaming up the steps of headquarters, like Archbishop Anselm. This shouldn’t be an existential battle for the soul of the party. It should be an HR problem.

Some free legal advice for those under arrest



‘Evening, all. What ’ave we got ’ere, then?’ Photograph: RTimages / Alamy/Alamy

“Do you know who I am?” Ant McPartlin is reported to have asked the police officer who was arresting him for drink driving, as if, in some corner of his psyche, he was concerned that his reputation wasn’t quite tarnished enough. A friend was arrested for drink driving in a hotel car park. Asked to get out of the vehicle, he said: “I can’t, you’ll shoot me.” The officer said that he wouldn’t, this being Hemel Hempstead, not Ohio. “Promise?” He promised. “Do you double promise?” His advice, dragged diligently back from the coal face of delinquency, is that before you say anything to an officer of the law, imagine a barrister reading it back to you.