Rishi Sunak and the irresistible rise of the new plutocrats

The irresistible rise of the new plutocrats in politics is a remarkable new phenomenon that extends across the West — though it is not, as any Russian, Arab or Chinese witness will testify, limited to Western democracies. The United States is merely the most celebrated example of this trend, but the billionaires had been quietly transforming their wealth into power long before Donald Trump. 

Now Britain has its own case in point: our new Chancellor of the Exchequer. In Yorkshire, where he is William Hague’s successor as MP for Richmond, Rishi Sunak had been nicknamed “the maharajah of the Dales”. A former Goldman Sachs investment banker and entrepreneur, he is married to Akshata Murthy, the daughter of an Indian IT billionaire, NR Narayana Murthy. The first British Hindu to achieve such high office, just as Sajid Javid had been the first Muslim, both are self-made members of the global elite. It is significant that Sunak met his wife in California, which now has a large Indian presence in high tech.

The new global elites are, in many ways, American in culture if not in origin. Sunak confesses to an addiction to Coca-Cola (“I have seven fillings to show for it”). Emmanuel Macron and other more patrician globalists would probably not admit to such vulgar tastes, but Trump himself is not ashamed to be seen swilling down what is still the world’s most recognisably American brand.

Michael Bloomberg, who is emerging as the wealthiest of all the billionaires now occupying the political stage, looks down on the hustler from Queens whom he intends to supplant as President. “We know many of the same people in NY,” the former mayor sneers. “Behind your back they call you a carnival barking clown.” Such jibes are plausible enough to sting. “He knows I have the record and the resources to defeat him,” tweets Bloomberg, who has already spent more on his campaign than any candidate in history — though it is small change for a tycoon worth an estimated $60 billion.

Even nations that pride themselves on electing leaders on the basis of their brains rather than their bank balance are susceptible to the blandishments of a Bloomberg. Take the Czech Republic, for example. Over the course of 1989, the dissident playwright Vaclav Havel went from languishing in a Communist prison to taking over as President in Prague Castle. Havel was succeeded by his arch-rival Vaclav Klaus — also an intellectual, but an economist. Just four years later, in 2017, the Czechs elected as Prime Minister the press tycoon Andrej Babiš, the second richest man in the country. Babiš had briefly been finance minister. Despite allegations of tax evasion and corruption, he remains in office and his popularity has even survived an alliance with the Communists.

Before Trump, the richest leader of a major democracy was probably Sergio Berlusconi. Ironically known as il cavaliere — a less aristocratic plutocrat would be hard to imagine — Berlusconi became Italy’s longest-serving Prime Minister by ruthlessly exploiting the power of the media. Those who did not work for companies he owned could often be bought; those who could not be bought could be tied down by litigation. Money can be used in myriad ways to gain power and to keep it. If the rule of law is less than secure, as was certainly the case in Berlusconi’s Italy, then the plutocrat is almost unstoppable.

Yet there are exceptions. Ukraine politics is not exactly known for its incorruptibility, but despite his ownership of one of the main TV channels, the confectionary oligarch Petro Poroshenko was ousted as President last year by Volodymyr Zelensky — a Jewish comedian. The chocolate king met his match in the celebrity satirist.

Here in Britain we like to think that billionaires could never exploit their wealth to gain office. We forget that our first and still longest-serving Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, enriched himself in office sufficiently to build Houghton Hall and fill it with an art collection worthy of a king. (Much of it was indeed bought by the Empress Catherine the Great and is now in the Hérmitage.) Indeed, most of the great 18th, 19th and early 20th century Prime Ministers were wealthy men: not only the grandees such as Lords Derby and Salisbury, but commoners such as Peel, Gladstone and Baldwin, too. Some married money (Wellington, Disraeli and Rosebery), others were married for their money (Macmillan). Churchill earned prodigious amounts of money by most people’s standards, but it was never enough to sustain the lifestyle to which he felt entitled as the nephew of a duke. Media tycoons have always been a presence in British politics, but usually behind the scenes; none has even tried to attain the heights of elected office, like Bloomberg or Berlusconi. They have never quite recovered from Baldwin’s devastating dig at the press barons of his day: “Power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”.

Rishi Sunak is almost certainly wise enough to know that in British politics, wealth is best kept in the background. If he has any doubts, the MP for Richmond, Yorkshire should ask the former MP for Richmond, London. Zac Goldsmith, son of a charismatic billionaire, whose failure to become Mayor of London was followed by the loss of his seat, twice in three elections. Like so many monied politicians, he has ended up in the Lords. If the new plutocracy is now to encroach on British politics, too, then better far that the billionaires know their place — what MPs refer to as The Other Place.