There’s nothing like a crisis to throw into sharp relief the contours of the power structure that have long been latent until they burst out into the open under the force of events. It has been a long time since anybody believed that Parliament ran the country or was the final decision-taker in the nation’s affairs. Power has long since drained upwards, beginning with Lloyd George a century ago, towards the Cabinet and the Prime Minister. But the veneer of collegiality lingered on in the UK after the Second World War, even when Richard Crossman was still complaining that “the power of the Prime Minister has grown, is still growing, and should be cut back”. It was however only the ascendancy of Thatcher that consigned the premier’s role as primus inter pares to history, and that process of consolidating prime ministerial power was taken much further by Blair. He first consolidated his power within the Labour party by devaluing the role of the unions, party conference and national executive. He then systematically used the party machine to promote favoured (Blairite) candidates at selection conferences in order to clone the PLP with his own supporters who provided him with an ultra-reliable praetorian guard within Parliament. Having secured his party and parliamentary base and eliminated any serious challenge to his own position, he assiduously wooed the prevailing sources of power both within the UK (the City, CBI and the media) by giving them almost whatever they asked, and also on the world stage by slavishly cultivating whoever happened to be the US President (since Clinton and Bush could hardly be more different). Now all of that has fallen to pieces.

Under Blair the British elite played along with this power charade because it suited them. He bought the support of the Mail and the Sun by changing course when they wanted, he removed virtually all constraints from the City on their freedom of action, and he gave access and support to industrial leaders while cold-shouldering the unions. That facade of the Prime Minister holding the ring between these competing forces whilst enhancing his own charisma has now collapsed under his successor. The weakness of the Labour Party and its leader is not only bad for politics, it is opening up a vacuum in which some of the lead players in the British economy are now drawing the lesson that they can do what they like and are almost impervious to challenge.
The banks, having largely caused the financial crisis, then pushed Brown (though he didn’t need much pushing) into increasing public debt to the level of half the nation’s entire GDP in order to bail them out, then refused to accept any reciprocal conditions for this eye-watering bounty (like increasing lending to businesses to save jobs – such lending is now 20% down on 2 years ago), then vigorously rejected any increase in regulation, and now is returning shamelessly to business-as-usual via a redoubled bonus culture and vast salary hikes. Brown is even now still doing their bidding by trying to block EU regulation in order to pay court to the hedge funds and private equity who are threatening otherwise to leave the City. A more prostrate subordination it is difficult to imagine, except perhaps what the Tories might do if they win the election.
We do not have the lawlessness of Teheran on our streets – because it isn’t necessary – but power is passing unmistakeably out of the hands of the elected Government towards the central proponents of the dominant neoliberal finance model, the banks and finance institutions. The current urge for radical Parliamentary democratic reform may be all the rage (and after a century of inertia it is desperately needed), but it is small beer when put alonside the unleashing of corporate and financial power that we are now witnessing. Until that is tamed and brought back within the bounds of the legitimate and accountable State, there will be no real and effective democracy in this country.

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