Alpha City. Rowland Atkinson

and the founder of the SAS, David Stirling, adopted a vision of the UK as a fading imperial power whose gentlemanly capitalism and establishment were being undermined by complacency and adherence to rules. In this context, shareholder seizures of company control and asset stripping proved an effective means of wresting power and generating remarkable if sometimes short-lived fortunes. The group appeared to be anti-establishment while adopting a kind of retrotopic vision of Britain as a nation that could restore its economic pre-eminence at least for those prepared to risk their own and others’ capital. The story bears some relationship to the contemporary impression of new money and anti-establishment elites who, in order to usurp power, have sought to use Brexit as a means to construct a narrative of a country in decline.

      Today’s alpha rich are not a mono-form power bloc. Identifiable sub-groups are clustered by nationality (the British, of which there are still many; Russians, Hong Kongers, Emiratis and so on), source of wealth (commodities, energy, food and brewing, media), and industry sector (finance, development, industry). Most of the new money has emerged in recent decades, rather than being dynastic. Where some proclaim a more porous and meritocratic corporate world rewarding a new generation of go-getters and innovators, others have charted shifts in the scale, intensity and asymmetrical reward systems of the global economy. These changes have had the effect of producing many new entrants to the wealth elite, often with relatively little effort on their part, facilitated by state monopoly positions, tax evasion, offshore finance and, in some cases, dubious or criminal trade.

      A portrait of London’s wealthiest can be painted in miniature by examining media reports of the owners of apartments at One Hyde Park, the epitome of the city’s contemporary wealth elite and the destination of the spoils from many mineral and energy-rich countries.² This development, in which apartments are frequently purchased via an offshore company, transformed the fortunes of the Candy Brothers, Nick and Christian, one of whom himself owns an apartment in what has been described as the only ultra-prime development in the city. From a variety of sources we can learn something of what others have described as the ‘shadowy’ residents of the development. There are eighty apartments in this opulent, semi-fortified block that sits a stone’s throw from Harvey Nichols, perhaps two from Harrods.

      The wealth of One Hyde Park’s residents appears to be based almost solely on new money, made from privatised energy fields, from the monopoly control of telecommunications, real estate, pharmaceuticals, oil, property, gambling, and, allegedly in some cases, from organised criminal involvement. The list of nationalities is long, including Russians and those from Lebanon, Malaysia, Australia, Qatar, Nigeria and Taiwan, among others. Only one UK national has been reported to live there, other than Christian Candy, who bought duplex penthouse D for an estimated $270m.

      One Hyde Park represents the top tier, the billionaire metropolis in miniature. Across the city, the estimated number of such masters of the universe is almost a hundred. This is a small number of singularly powerful individuals who have a high impact in social, economic and political terms. Among London’s billionaires are Brits like Jim Ratcliffe, James Dyson and Philip Green. In addition, Russians such as Roman Abramovich, Oleg Deripaska and Alisher Usmanov are a significant group, as are those from the Middle East and East Asia. They are courted by politicians but often avoided by journalists, who have become fearful of litigation. Such figures are able to construct a world for themselves, a city whose social order and economic underpinnings are designed to place no obstacles in their way.

      Many will point out that the alpha rich are also notable for their demonstrations of largesse. Certainly the use of personal foundations and charitable giving has become significant, but this remains paltry when compared with the scale of personal wealth. It is also the case that the British super-rich are significantly less generous than their US equivalents, though some have managed to make a mark on the apparently public world of the city’s galleries and museums. For example, Lord Ashcroft reportedly has the largest collection of Victoria Cross medals in the world, estimated to be worth more than £30 million, and paid the £5m needed to build the Ashcroft wing at the Imperial War Museum, in which they could be housed. He is also Chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University. Anthony Bamford has given millions to the Conservative Party and some tens of thousands to charity.

      New and international wealth seeks a place in the city by selective giving in order to build reputation and acceptability. In a recent profile of Len Blavatnik, the Financial Times reported that he paid £41m for his mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens in order to assist his entry into the London elite. In the process he reputedly purchased the advice of a lord and a knight. Blavatnik has given around £75m to the School of Government at the University of Oxford, £50m to Tate Modern for the Blavatnik building, and a further £5m to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2018, which renamed its Exhibition Road entrance after him.

      The Sackler family (pharma money) have financed a gallery at the Serpentine, and there is a Sackler Studio at the Globe theatre, a Sackler Hall at the British Museum and even a Sackler Bridge in Kew Gardens. Idan Ofer has given £25m to cheerleaders of the capitalist world order at the London Business School to help fund their Marylebone Town Hall campus, while Lakshmi Mittal gifted £47m to the National Gallery (which was also expanded through Sainsbury family money in 1991) and a wing at Great Ormond Street Hospital. This naming of public spaces and facilities continues the practice of the earlier super-rich who helped create the Tate Gallery, the British Museum and the Courtauld Gallery.

      At this point we need to look at the goalkeeper and avoid being distracted by the fancy footwork of the new centre forwards. New money may grab the attention, but it is the deeper structures of the city and its social order that we need to focus on to see how the interests and influence of capital shape the city’s daily operation – the factotums, or enablers, of capital and the super-rich. London today is, if nothing else, the physical expression of the kind of steroidal capitalism that emerged from the crisis of a decade ago. In this phase of the city’s development, more elusive and complex methods of wealth creation have been supported by an increasingly affluent class of enablers (directors, financiers, hedge fund managers), politicians deeply aligned with an expansive market-orientation, and those working in the real estate sector (developers, builders, elite realtors).

      We can and should look to the richest of the rich as points of influence and symbols of inequality, but the story of the city also heavily involves those agents and institutions employed and deployed by the super-rich and the managers at the helm of large corporations. Many bankers play with other people’s money and are not necessarily super-rich in the terms we have been describing; there are nearly 700,000 who work in finance and banking in the alpha city. However, it is also true that those who are dependent on and work for capital more broadly have a clear interest in the perpetuation and thriving of sectors and mechanisms that are advantageous to them. The enablers are a well-networked mediating class, consciously aware of their role in facilitating capital flows and capitalists because their business depends on them. This is a group that we shall keep returning to in later chapters.

      The reinforcement of money and power by place