I know, I know: David Cameron, the guy who manfully overcame his privileged and cosseted upbringing, is the one who’s going to be living at that address. But the man who put Cameron at Number Ten Downing is a Frenchman named Baudoin Prot, the chief executive officer of BNP Paribas, a huge multinational banking firm — and Cameron and the Tories had better do as he says, or he can break them just as he made them.

How did M. Prot become the de facto ruler of the British Isles? By holding the British economy hostage. As David Dayen mentioned earlier, Prot’s analysts at BNP Paribas, alarmed that Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, was on the verge of an agreement with the Labour Party to form a new government, let it be known that if Clegg dared form a government with anyone but Cameron and the Tories, they were going to downgrade the UK’s AAA credit rating, thus putting the squeeze on an already-sickly Great Britain. That was enough to send Clegg scurrying into the arms of David Cameron.

So, what will life be like under the Prot government? Well, if you’re someone who, like David Cameron, grew up in abject wealth, it promises to be lovely. Ditto if you’re a banker or a corporate director. But if you’re not one of those blokes, well — too bad, so sad. If you’re one of those greedy old grannies who can’t die fast enough to save the exchequer some pelf that could be going towards a corporate tax cut (what, and you thought the Tories cared about the deficit? Hahahahaha!), then guess what? Your life is about to get a good deal worse.