London’s contemporary power bloc consists of many key individuals, but these people are almost incidental to the exercise of power. It is the roles they perform and the resources they hold that bring power to life. There is, however, a sense that the traditional establishment has undergone a change, not so much in terms of its personnel, but in the reconfiguration of its underlying operating system. The old political and economic order is not dead, but its fabric has been rewoven to include the very rich and their agents acting, lobbying and building on their behalf.
The city’s power bloc is thus a complex amalgam of forces, money flows and wealth. This is not to suggest some kind of fully integrated, coherent network of individuals and institutions. Wealth is not just about a coterie or an elite, it is also about an idea or a set of values to which many in the city and beyond now subscribe. These values are transmitted through training in neoclassical economics and underwritten by the tenets of financial journalism and the discourse of politicians who are themselves often the beneficiaries of dynastic or new wealth to say nothing of those who aspire to be wealthy themselves. The result is the capture of the city by money and those whose interests are served by it.
City capture is a process that involves not so much conflict and strategic gain as an apparently voluntary acceptance and submission to the ruling logics of capital and its expansion.18 Making lots of money is understood as a positive sign, and good things come to those who can attract more money and inward investment. This means that those with money can colonise, profit from and subsequently dictate how the city and its various resources are to be used. This can be seen in the way planning authorities in the city have come to identify private developers as critical to the remaking of many districts, while presiding over the demolition and loss of desperately needed public housing. This capture of place has been achieved without battle or bloodshed, if not without some degree of localised protest and significant social pain.
The capacity of market logic to colonise the minds of those occupying positions of power is an important aspect of what has been termed cognitive capture – the influence over government of key economic ideas and principles of the importance of markets and the high value to be placed on financial institutions.19 In the present context this means that political institutions become preoccupied with the idea that finance capital is central to economic vitality and are thus supportive of whatever finance needs in order to flourish. These assumptions run so deeply that they often remain unquestioned. The power of Wall Street and the City of London arguably resides not just in their daily business activity but also in their ability to perpetuate deep assumptions about what is good for all.
These influences and processes are periodically exemplified by the comments of key politicians, keen to show they are not antagonistic to the interests of capital and its primary beneficiaries, the rich. Whether it be the ‘intensely relaxed’ attitude towards the wealthy famously expressed by Peter Mandelson, or the lauding of the rich as ‘tax heroes’ by the former London mayor, and now prime minister, Boris Johnson, this open and welcoming environment gives those holding fortunes significant power. Yet their influence in reality works its magic in indistinct ways. Billionaires and UHNWIs do not generally make direct demands on political parties, though of course we are increasingly learning more about the role of the rich and international wealthy in political funding and lobbying. More often politicians, seeking investment in their town or city, simply act in tandem with the needs of capital by second-guessing the agendas of the super-rich, because, in essence, they identify these with their own needs.
Of course, plutocracies do sometimes operate by way of large bribes or expensive and laborious lobbying (the influence on electoral politics of hedge fund managers and rich individuals being but one example), but at the city level these processes become more opaque and complex, even though the results are everywhere in evidence around us. These include proposals for costly projects like the unbuilt Garden Bridge, the undermining of public planning rules by developers seeking to avoid having to build affordable housing, the incorporation of city councillors into the property machine via hospitality and gifts, the drive by developers to build almost exclusively for the world’s wealthy and for investors, the evident lack of capacity to police the vast flows of laundered money in the built environment, the demolition of viable and essential public housing and the banishment of tenants beyond the city.
None of these things happened because some billionaire picked up the phone and called the mayor. They happened because it became acceptable and was deemed necessary to think that these processes represented the most efficient and best use of the city in order to ensure its maximal profitability. This is why the story presented here cannot be fully understood simply through the traditional tropes of old boy’s networks, private clubs or meetings over liquid lunches in the City.
A number of key changes can be identified that undergird these shifts in the operation of the city. Certainly the city’s elite and its networks have, over time, become increasingly efficient at recruiting those whose primary allegiance is to making money, rather than to notions of class or indeed nation. These changes have altered the formation of existing elites while building new and more complex ones. Constellations of interests, including the City and its various institutions, the government and cabinet, underwrite systems of regulation and rules of trade that facilitate rounds of accumulation by the affluent. The game of politics and corporate life has changed significantly during the neoliberal era, with self-serving, short-termist and reckless behaviour increasingly evident.20 Politicians have arguably changed in their role and position in relation to the (newly) wealthy. They have become what some now describe as a kind of butler class – functionaries who see their role as one of subordination to the wealthy, supporting, guiding and pampering them.
This is the way of urban life in a plutocratic city in which money power is courted and channelled wherever possible by central and local government officials, who are either themselves signatories to the mantra of footloose capital and trickle-down economics or who believe that they have little agency over such forces. Critically, the results impact not only on the lives of the elites; they also have the effect of underwriting arguments made for dislodging the poor or for ignoring middle-income groups who are seen as less valuable to the urban economy. There is a real savagery to these processes, even if it is frequently cloaked in a language of opportunity or described in terms of new horizons of international investment. Meanwhile the policy-making elite are able to live sheltered from the consequences of their own decisions, in leafy districts, comfortable clubs and on exciting leisure circuits, uninterrupted by envious workers or lazy benefit recipients.
Money has real power – it can generate a new skyline, subvert planning principles and rules, purchase apparently unpurchaseable club memberships and secure privileged access to policy-makers and governments or to important power networks that are less visible. Money doesn’t force its way in; it slides into the scene and is usually welcomed. Money power is the binding and guiding logic of the city, dictating, influencing and shaping the parameters of what is possible. The overall effect has been that London, a city that has long worked for capital through its financial services sector, increasingly also works for the rich.
The alpha city is to the rich what bones are to the human body. It is here that the rich are supported by fine homes, clubs, power networks and a diverse cast of assistants. The close-knit presence and availability of the alpha city’s support system means that the rich are clustered in its finest and most luxurious districts. There is something about such places, an almost indefinable aura that attracts the super-rich to the city’s fine streets and homes but also to its multiplying social potentiality. These qualities leaven an almost globally unique mix of heritage, prestige and culture. All of this combines to create a city to live in, but also one to be seen in by the right people at key moments in the social