In 1987 three million people were out of work; the "big bang" had just revolutionised the City and there was wide concern that exorbitant salaries would distort pay scales; as heavy industry collapsed, what became known as the underclass was swelling; there had been riots in Tottenham; the gap between state and private education was becoming a chasm; beggars were back in the underpasses and the doorways of London's West End; the NHS was, as ever, a political minefield.

Until I reread my book to prepare it for fresh publication, I had forgotten the detail of life in Britain a quarter of a century ago. The similarities with today are stunning: add a few noughts to take account of inflation, and what was written then could, for the most part, be written today. The difficulties that beset us then beset us now.

How slow we have been to do anything about yesteryear's problems has in recent weeks been highlighted by very belated action. Shareholders are promised control over executive pay; the education secretary at last appears genuinely concerned about low standards; the country is tackling some, at least, of the professional classes' vested interests.

In the late 1980s the dominant figure was, of course, Margaret Thatcher. She was re-elected with less than 30% of the available vote, yet she bestrode the country like a medieval monarch, setting both the political agenda and the zeitgeist. Her spectre hovered over my travels round Britain: the devil take the hindmost had become the dominant philosophy and more fool he who waited at a bus stop when he could afford a BMW. The greed – and the lack of controls that made greed possible – had become not just acceptable, but praiseworthy.

Born in the 1940s and growing up in a society that became more harmonious (the war had created a "we are all in this together" spirit that survived long after the last of Hitler's bombs fell), I was in 1987 deeply disturbed by what I found. Four months after her June election, Thatcher uttered the infamous phrase "there is no such thing as society", words that surely later must have haunted even her, and the spirit of that statement set the tone of public discourse.

Thatcher revelled in social differences that had been gradually melting: she restored hereditary peerages (for her deputy, Willie Whitelaw), hereditary baronetcies (for her husband, Denis), and educated her son Mark (now, of course, after the death of his father, "Sir" Mark) at Harrow. Where I travelled – often in out-of-the-way, largely ignored areas of the United Kingdom – there was no question where most people stood: Thatcher was one of "them", not one of "us".

After the first world war, the government was warned that the "foolish and dangerous ostentation of the rich" would create social unrest. In 1987, when the young and privileged partied on their City salaries and inherited wealth, that lesson had been forgotten. Sloanes were in their prime, and the jeunesse dorée drank themselves insensible as their elders paraded at Ascot. My memories of encounters with the Hooray Henries of 1987 are stirred whenever I see pictures of the young royals staggering from nightclubs. Like the poor, the ostentatiously rich are always with us.

A stone's throw from where these people partied, thousands lived in deprivation, warehoused in south London's grim estates. One woman told me: "The people who have power to make changes are far away; they haven't a clue what it is all about." In fact, they were just down the road in Westminster and the City, but what the woman meant was that the powers-that-were lived in a different reality.

Are they any nearer today? When riots broke out again last year in Tottenham, there was not just dismay, but disbelief. There should not have been. The environment from which those troubles sprang was well established in 1987, and the people I met uttered constant warnings. Little had changed. Comfortable Britain's collective lack of knowledge as to how "the other half" lives has in recent years been yet further reduced. Much of today's media, dazzled by celebrity and obsessed by triviality, devotes little resource to reporting what life is really like in Britain.

Education is much now as it was then. The division created by independent schools has, if anything, grown wider. George Orwell suggested that the postwar Labour government would have achieved more social equality, and therefore greater social contentment, had it used its clout and energies to abolish public schools rather than to nationalise the commanding heights of the economy. Melvyn Bragg was quoted recently as saying that public schools "are the bedrock of the inequality that cripples the country". Seven per cent of children go to fee-paying schools: did ever so short a tail wag so large a dog? In 1987, as now, the middle classes were agonising over comprehensives. I visited one in Knutsford, Cheshire, that without question passed the anxious parent test.

But, abused by the press and largely unloved, comprehensives in the end got a firm thumbs down, hence the academies and "free" schools that are the enthusiasms of the moment. In 1987 Britain, social class bedevilled education as it bedevils it today. Choice, as a campaigner for state education told me, is a nice word for an often nasty process.

I passed my teens under an Old Etonian cabal, presided over by Harold Macmillan: 50-plus years later, I live again under an Old Etonian clique. Before he was elected, I asked at a local hustings my now MP, Old Etonian Zac Goldsmith, how it came about that, in Tory leadership terms, we were back in the 1950s. All the Old Etonians likely to be in a Conservative government were, he assured me, absolutely the best people among our 60 million fellow citizens to occupy those commanding heights.

The distortion in opportunity is so obvious that those who benefit ought at the least to recognise not just the advantages they buy their children, but the consequences for the massive numbers of the less fortunate. Look at the proportional imbalance in places awarded by major universities between state and fee-paying students. Those who campaign against such inequalities often stand accused of suffering from the "politics of envy"; they should be hailed as champions of the "politics of fairness". Our debate on so many issues is conducted by "them" rather than by "us". Those who appear on Newsnight are well protected from the issues they discuss. They are not just comfortable, but fireproof, as safe as armchair generals discussing distant wars. The voice of the people is rarely heard; maybe occasionally after riots when randomly selected bystanders are given their 15 minutes (in reality 15 seconds) of fame. Then back, with relief, to "them" in the studio.

One major change has been the arrival of east Europeans, widely abused for "taking our jobs". A farmer I know had almost exclusively employed east Europeans to pack his produce but, in the spirit of "British jobs for British people", he approached his local job centre in the hope of taking on born-and-bred Britons. Fifty showed interest, of whom five turned up. Four quit by week's end, and the fifth somewhat blotted his copybook by drawing a knife on a fellow worker. Back, therefore, to the trusted and reliable Estonians and Lithuanians.

I went with Labour MP Frank Field to meet five unemployed teenagers. The organiser of the gathering had had to visit their homes to get them out of bed for the ungodly meeting time of 10.30am. While we were together they continuously texted each other and giggled, and what the courteous, concerned Field had to say was as water off ducks' backs. He asked one why she had given up a job in a cafe. "The boss asked me to take the rubbish out, didn't she?" I can see no employer touching one of those kids: little wonder the Poles "take our jobs".

What have we learned since this book was first published? The dispiriting answer is: very little. Most of our leaders now were in short trousers then. Occupied as modern politicians are with fighting brush fires, they have little time for the past. In 1987 the writer Hanif Kureishi urged every cabinet minister to read this book. I, of course, would urge our present leaders along the same lines. What we sowed then, we reap now.