If, as your editorial suggests, we feel “we are governed by ministers who regard the rules as being for other people” (“Chancellor has damaged faith in democracy”, Comment), it is because they operate with the complacent condescension of Roman patricians, a group that governed by birthright and among whom Boris Johnson behaves like Caesar.
It helps to explain what Andrew Rawnsley calls “The stench of entitlement now oozing from Rishi Sunak’s home as well as Mr Johnson’s” (Comment). Rawnsley wonders whether Sunak was “naive, idiotic, complacent, cavalier or arrogant” over his wife’s tax affairs, but once we recognise that Tory ministers think of themselves not as a class but a political caste all becomes clear.
