Explaining that a spiv is “a person who dresses nattily, lives well even in hard times for others, and makes his living by disreputable means”, Dalrymple argues at Salisbury Review that spivvery is endemic to modern Britain:

You have only to read the Financial Times’ Saturday supplement, How to Spend It, to understand how much of our economy is in essence a spiv economy. The supplement is aimed not at people with more money than sense, but at a group of people far, far worse: people with more money than taste, for whom Sir Philip Green (if he still is Sir Philip) is a leader of fashion.