If J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic
The Lord of the Rings was re-made into a seasonable film today, it would probably look like this: The Dark Lord
Sauron would be replaced by Sir Terry Leahy, while
Tesco would take the place of Sauron’s dark empire
Mordor . The threatened idyll of the Shire, where lovely Hobbits form a small-is-beautiful barter economy, would be replaced by a pastoral Merry England of some distant past. The titanic
clash between the evil wizard Saruman and the wise wizard Gandalf could be replaced by the recent showdown between
Tim Montgomerie who dubbed Terry Leahy a ‘champion of the poor’, and Guardian journalist
Alex Renton , who thinks that
“Sir Terry has done more damage to the fabric of British life than any other businessman in modern times”.