In the 1980s, with a shop-keeper’s daughter as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, there was a distinct feeling, for the first time in Britain, that anyone could aspire to be anything they wanted to be, irrespective of background.

There is ample evidence to suggest that sense of social mobility has declined since then. We have seen the Presidency of the United States, a country founded on opposition to hereditary monarchy, passed from father to son, and the current British Prime Minister went to Eton, possibly the most elitist school in the world – he is Eton’s nineteenth Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Britain’s socialist Labour Party has more in common with the Medieval Royalty of The Lion In Winter ...

...than with its egalitarian founders, as two brothers are now fighting each other for its leadership.

Those may be unfair examples, but there is a lot of research that backs up the impression that the Establishment – political, academic, and cultural, as well as banks and big business – is a lot more incestuous and inward-looking than it was twenty years ago.

It should be stressed that this is no longer, if it ever was, about “class” – a nebulous concept these days – or about race or gender or even education.

It is all about contacts.

Birth and education can influence success, but only in as much as they can be used for making connections. The real dividing lines in the modern world are between those who are plugged into the relevant networks and those left on the outside. Barak Obama, for example, came from humble origins, but, from his twenties onwards, he was filling a formidable address book, which was the real foundation of his apparent rise from nowhere in just six years.

Many become entrepreneurs precisely because they dislike old boy networks. Small business may be the last surviving enclave of true egalitarianism and meritocracy – where what you know matters more than who you know.

Yet even in small business, contacts matter. Whether you are buying or selling, negotiations are easier if you can pick up the telephone and get straight though to the Chairman or Chief Executive of a big supplier or customer. It also helps, more than ever, to have friends on the inside when dealing with public authorities. It is depressing that things work this way now, but we did not make the rules – we can only play by them.

Even more depressing is the fact that entrepreneurship was always the best ladder by which people could rise by talent alone – and increasing regulation and taxation by the closed Establishment is now kicking that ladder away.