Someone asked in reference to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the New World Order thus partly inaugurated -

"Did Communism collapse, or was the West quietly absorbed into it?"

Could anyone living through the then-seemingly-unending Thatcher era imagine that PC would have the hold it does on public discourse in Britain? The weird combination of sell-the-country's-assets free-marketeering, nihilistic permissiveness and witch-hunting piousness is not something I'd have envisioned even fifteen years ago.

The response of the political class to the ever-rising power of corporations, and the latters' arguable attainment of a quasi-state character, seems to be to remodel their countries' internal make-up so as to better enable them to attract ever-volatile investment that can up and leave in a moment. Early in his premiership Tony Blair addressed a conference of business people, stating that social cohesion was a vital part of the macroeconomic framework necessary to their enterprises' success. Offering a deal in other words -

"Look, you know...we know we need you...but also, you need us. Work with us and we will deliver the non-elite populace over to you".

Enforcing the kind of social cohesion necessary to make Britain an attractive proposition to cold-eyed investors is something that comes naturally to the pragmatically-power-seeking creatures whose outlooks were incubated during the long years outside central power, in the unions and in 'loony-left' town halls. Here was at last an opportunity to remake the social fabric, to police people's most banal actions (where judged significant) and their very utterances, an opportunity to wield the kind of power they'd always felt was their due, to ooze righteousness in the process, and to make an excellent living into the bargain.