And while his predecessors were guilty of many things, none behaved like a president, or even a king. Thaksin’s great error, made over and over again, was to confuse the country’s good with his own; to judge an attack on him as an attack on the state. There is only one embodiment of the nation and the people, and that is the King. To an army fiercely loyal to the crown, the attack was intolerable.

He also angered the top brass by befriending the Burmese junta, with which he has a satellite television deal, and by reducing the Thai military presence on a volatile border. Bangkok’s middle classes, meanwhile, saw him as a tax-dodging crony capitalist who exploited his position and subverted democracy for the benefit of his family and friends. ~Alex Spillius, The Spectator