Why is it that the people who caused the financial crash have got away with it while those who played no part have been punished? This, essentially, is the question Owen Jones poses in his passionate account of political and economic injustice.
In searching for the answer he, like other columnists before him, has alighted on the “e” word, the establishment.
David Cameron, the Conservative chameleon de nos jours, saw an opportunity in the mayhem wreaked by the bankers. Before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the leader of the opposition had pledged to match Labour’s spending plans. As the author points out, Cameron quickly changed tack and deftly turned crisis into opportunity. Prompted by financiers and their friends, he turned economics on its head, declaring that the problem was caused not by an out-of-control financial services industry but by a bloated state. Cuts became the mantra to turn Britain back on to the path of prosperity.
Jones sees conspiracy in the volte-face. He opens his dissection of the elite by conducting interviews with well-known rightwing bloggers and lobbyists, from Guido Fawkes to the Taxpayers’ Alliance, via an array of thinktanks with acronyms familiar to Westminster anoraks, who share a thirst for political argument and polemic.
The Alliance, he argues, has been fundamental to Cameron’s political strategy, particularly since forming the government in 2010. Everything is done, Jones complains, to demonise the public sector, which cannot help but waste the public’s money. However, for all the small-state rhetoric of the right, the elite can only serve its interests, thanks to state structures.
“The state is the backbone of modern capitalism and sustains it: protecting big business, training its workers and subsidising their wages, bailing out its financial heart, directly topping up bank profits,” he writes.
The author notes the propensity of politicians to double as representatives of business. According to a 2012 study, 46 per cent of the top 50 publicly traded firms in the United Kingdom had a British parliamentarian either as a director or a shareholder. This figure, he claims, is higher than for any of the 46 other nations investigated — with the second highest being Italy, which comes in a long way behind.
This is an arresting statistic but I wonder whether, in spite of the many faults of the system, British politicians are more biddable than others in Europe.
Jones is on more solid ground when he laments the role of the taxman, aka Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and its former boss, Dave Hartnett. After presiding over a period when HMRC cut deal after “sweetheart” deal with large corporations, ensuring that they paid a small amount of tax, as long as they paid some, Hartnett took up a job with Deloitte, one of the “big four” accountancy firms, which helps its clients minimise their tax.
From the Daily Mail to the Guardian, via the ever-vocal chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge, that move was greeted with raised hackles. Citing a study published by the FT, Jones points out that in the past decade 18 ex-ministers and former civil servants ended up working with the big four, including two former New Labour home secretaries, a former head of the No 10 policy unit and a former adviser to the deputy prime minister.
Why, the author points out, did they go for the comedian Jimmy Carr and not for the many big figures in the City who have engaged in tax “minimisation”? Because, he argues, Carr has fewer friends in high places. From the police to politicians, via regulators and bankers, Jones compellingly highlights the accumulation of power and its abuse by small coteries determined to preserve their wealth and status.
I am less convinced by his denunciation of the media. Of course, newspapers have committed crimes and egregious errors. He is right to point out that the biggest mistake of the flawed Leveson inquiry was its failure to engage with the biggest problem of ownership.
“By focusing their fire at those at the bottom — often with coverage based on distortions, myths and outright lies — they deflect scrutiny from the wealthy and powerful elite at the top of society,” he insists.
Some outlets may show prejudice; others may be too pliant. But co-ordinated conspiracy, this is not. After all, some of the toughest critiques of this government and investigations into public life, not least MPs’ expenses, have been conducted by pro-Conservative newspapers.
Very few of the many books on the greed and irresponsibility of the past decade have provided a route map to a fairer society. Jones identifies the previous Labour government as equally culpable. He quotes Stewart Wood, one of Ed Miliband’s most influential advisers, as saying: “New Labour thought it could keep winning without tackling some of the things that progressive politics should be challenging.” They regarded elections as in the bag. They didn’t need to go further or to challenge the Thatcherite settlement.
As a result, he says, millions of citizens find themselves unrepresented by conventional politics. Even mild shifts by the Labour leadership away from the establishment’s group think trigger a frenzied response. “A narrow consensus is zealously guarded and policed.”
Given the sense of disenfranchisement, given the limits set on supposedly mainstream debate, one might have expected more radical proposals for change. Jones focuses on a small list: limits to political donations; greater transparency in revealing ministerial meetings with business; MPs barred from taking second jobs for cash; and changing the demographic of parliament.
In an arresting conclusion, he argues that the structure of the UK (and global) economy is not just unjust, it is inefficient. “Future generations will surely look back with a mixture of astonishment and contempt at how British society is currently organised.”
And yet, and yet nearly a decade on from the crash, the left across Europe has still not produced a sustainable counter-argument. Closer to home, even after the most protracted recession of modern times, Cameron still has a fighting chance of victory in next year’s general election. If that is a conspiracy, it is a pretty clever one.
–Guardian News & Media Ltd
John Kampfner’s latest book, “The Rich”, a 2,000-year History, is published by Little Brown on October 2.
The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It is published by Allen Lane (16.99).
