Powerbrokering has shifted from landed gentry to financiers and businessmen, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
The shared political, personal and financial interests of this network are the glue that binds them, turning them into a sort of family, one whose members are forgiving of each other. The outside world recedes into a distant hostile plane, where the rules apply differently. The faces of the public that the politicians are meant to serve blur into irrelevance, whereas those of their friends and peers are clear, sharpened by common experiences, memories and social interactions.
The values these intimacies create – rather than money – inevitably trickle down into policy. As prime minister, to take one recent example, Sunak is rolling back post-financial crisis regulations to create space for more City activity after Brexit, a potentially destabilising move that the Bank of England governor hasfor financiers to make more money, but he will not look into how that money could be more usefully taxed, through a range of wealth taxes that could raisefor public services. So when nurses and other essential workers are reduced to striking for a tiny increase in salaries, they are told the money simply does not exist.
“It has been supported by other corporations,” wrote Wade, “the church has been one, the agriculturists another; the boroughs a third, the East India Company a fourth, and the Bank of England a fifth: all these, and interests like these, constituted the citadel and out-works of its strength, and the first object of each has been to shun investigation.”
Powerbroking in Britain has passed from the hands of this old landed gentry and colonial trading class to the players of international finance. This is the network, not the old boys’ club: more accessible, less toffy, more colourful, with women in the fold, but just as steely and determined in its purpose to maintain its power, look after its own and shun investigation.
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