War in the City . . .
BRITISH class warfare awaits its John Keegan, who could now take his pick between the Conservatives and Barclays Bank and tell us what happens in battle. It is still at the primitive stage, he will say, when the generals get killed. At Barclays the whole of the top brass is being carried off the battlefield feet first. The bank had been led by a Wykehamist (Andrew Bux- ton, the chairman) disguised as an Etonian and an Etonian (Martin Taylor, the chief executive) disguised as a Wykehamist. This fine balance was disturbed by the arrival as deputy chairman of Sir Andrew Large, a Wykehamist in his true colours. Plato, a proto-Wykehamist himself, would have recognised in him the idea of Wykehamism. His new colleagues seem to have thought that he would be happy to leave things alone. How anybody who had ever met him could think that, I cannot imagine. Now the command passes to Sir Peter Middleton (a Sheffield City Grammarian) who had retired in May — pour tide= sauter, as we can now see. Last year Mr Taylor was offered a high appointment in government, but Mr Buxton talked him out of it. How they must both rue that now.
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