For starters, it’s Owen Jones in a beanie. But others only that:
Today we have tea and biscuits in his flat overlooking the yachts of other multimillionaires in London’s Docklands, but Stevenson remembers a time when he was a child in Ilford, east London , where he had virtually no clothes aside from his school uniform. It gave him an almost maniacal drive to succeed in the privileged world of the City, while causing his rivals to underestimate him – and pay the price. “The rich expect the poor to be stupid,” Stevenson says.
The merchants of The City – and yes, he was a merchant, not a banker – always come from those who know how to trade. Half of them still wear white socks and black shoes as they retire with their millions.
Many a town house has flourished thanks to an Irish Marquess, or one of the darker English viscounts, – but with good manners of course – to bring the money in the front door and half a dozen of costerboys making the money in the back room. Costers are paid an order of magnitude more than poshos.
Class matters in the City – because this is England, of course, class matters – but the City is deeply, deeply, unsentimental about class. Certainly the least sentimental place in the whole country. If the class can be used to make money, it will be. Likewise, if talent can be used to make money, it will. And when there is a distinction between social class and ability to earn money, money wins.
If this Irish marquis trades as well as the boy with the white socks, then he will be paid as much as the boy with the white socks. If he can’t, he won’t do it and will stay with a tenth of the amount.
It’s a fucking meritocracy.
