24 Britain The EconomistFebruary 22nd 2020
2N
amed afterMarx, who famously
did not want to belong to any club
that would accept him as a member, the
Groucho sold itself as the “antidote” to
the gentlemen’s clubs of London’s St
James’s district when it opened in 1985.
With a heavy drinking culture, artistic
spirit and cocaine-driven largesse, the
club captured the zeitgeist. Of late it has
been swept up in Soho’s commercialisa-
tion, and is now owned by a private-
equity firm. Despite offering reduced
fees for under-30s and a vegan menu, it is
not the magnet for youth it once was.
Today’s antidote is a breed of clubs
promoting values rather than louche-
ness. They offer a similar aesthetic to
those of the 1980s and 1990s: all have
adopted the velvet chesterfields and
modern British art customary at the
Groucho Club and Soho House, another
club popular among media types. The
new ingredient is “wokeness”.
In October The Wing, a glossy femi-
nist utopia that does not admit men,
opened its first branch outside America,
where there are ten. Candidates to join
the new outpost in Fitzrovia are asked,
for instance, to describe how they have
“promoted or supported the advance-
ment of women” and what they think is
the “biggest challenge facing women
today”. At the clubhouse, oil paintings of
Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mary Beard
(feminist heroes in acting and academia
respectively) line the walls, the library is
free from books written by men, and
badges dispensed at reception alloweveryone to indicate their preferred
personal pronoun. Members are de-
scribed either as “the cohort” or “the
witches” (liked for its connotations of
subverting male power).
The Wing’s native British equivalent
is AllBright. There are two in London,
and there will be three in America by the
end of the year. Like The Wing, it offers
an additional service beyond somewhere
stylish to socialise and work: self-help.
At The Wing, recent events have covered
self-sabotage, boundary-setting and how
to be “sober and social”. At AllBright,
group sessions have discussed impostor
syndrome and how to overcome fear.
Cognitive behavioural therapy and psy-
choanalysis are available by the hour.
Mindless hedonism is off the menu.
For mixed company, “people passion-
ate about driving positive impact” can
join The Conduit in Mayfair, opened by a
former chairman of Soho House, which
claims to be “a platform for catalysing
and supporting new ideas and collective
action”. For eco-enthusiasts there is
Arboretum in Covent Garden, a leafy
idyll where “people who care about the
planet convene, create and collaborate”.
Its deli promises dishes free from dairy,
refined sugars, additives and chemicals.
Other than the offer of cheap drinks
by some traditional clubs to attract youn-
ger members, little has stirred in St
James’s. As a result, clubland is increas-
ingly diverse. There are ever more clubs
for a modern Marx to be rejected by, and
even more reason to reject them.More woke than coke
Members’ clubsOut with drug-fuelled hedonism, in with intersectionalityYou’re a non-smoking, drug-free, teetotal vegan too? OMG! Let’s party!book* by Peter Riddell, a former head of the
ifg, quotes many former ministers be-
moaning their lack of preparation and say-
ing it often took them two years to learn
their job—at which point they were expect-
ed to move on and start all over again. Ex-
perience as a special adviser and then an
mp—which is all many ministers have—is
insufficient training for managing a com-
plex department.
Britain is rare among rich democracies
in requiring that all ministers must come
from its legislature, which means that the
talent pool is essentially limited to the rul-
ing party’s backbenchers. Outsiders can be
brought in through the House of Lords. But
this has often been unsuccessful in prac-
tice, and mps also complain that they can-
not hold peers to account. Discounting
those mps whom one Tory chief whip
memorably described as “the bad, mad,
drunk and over the hill”, the talent pool be-
comes even shallower.
This could be a problem for Mr Johnson.
Despite his 80-seat majority, he has many
enemies inside his party. His reshuffle
benefited keen Brexiteers in particular.
Many political analysts reckon that this
meant rewarding the compliant over the
competent. The sacking of Julian Smith,
the Northern Ireland secretary, fresh from
his success in getting the province’s assem-
bly up and running again, was widely criti-
cised. As previous prime ministers have
found, disgruntled big beasts lurking on
the backbenches instead of in the cabinet
can be destabilising.
Here at least Mr Johnson’s reshuffle fea-
tured one welcome innovation: bringing
back those whom he had earlier sacked.
Penny Mordaunt, a former defence secre-
tary, and James Brokenshire, a former
housing and local government secretary,
have returned to more junior posts in other
departments. Not all former cabinet minis-
ters will feel able to swallow their pride
after falling out with the prime minister
and his Downing Street team. But the pre-
cedent of ministerial return may at least
keep the talent pool that Mr Johnson has to
draw from in future a little deeper. 7Turnover time
Britain, average tenure, yearsSources: Institute for Government;
League Managers Association;
Staffing Industry Analysts*FTSE 100 companies
†Top four English leaguesFootball managers†
(2017-18 season)Secretary of State
(since 2010)CEOs*
(2018-19)6543210................................................................
*”15 minutes of power: the uncertain life of British
ministers”. By Peter Riddell, Profile Books, 2019.