This is my 400th blog, another milestone of sorts. In the past I’ve ruminated on the pluses and minuses of blogging, but I’ve little new to add, so here’s a quick one on the companion rewards of buying power by donating to the Conservative Party. You get cultural kudos as well as favourable policy shifts.
The growing wealth inequality in the UK has been well documented via a number of sources. One of these, the Sunday Times Rich List, notes in its 2021 presentation that the combined wealth of the UK’s billionaires has ballooned by nearly 22% during the COVID years. It currently adds up to £597.269bn. The UK now has 171 billionaires, up by 24 from 2020.
I have long stressed – through such theoretical/conceptual devices as the ‘class/command dynamic’ and the ‘greedy bastards hypothesis’ – that capital buys power to make policy; and therefore that studying that tiny minority of significant owners of capital (ie the ‘capital monopolists’) that buys the power to exercise hugely disproportionate influence on economic, social and health policy is a prerequisite for understanding and explaining widening health inequalities. If a quarter of a century late, there is some prima facie evidence that previously lethargic, timid or intimidated sociologists of health and illness are warming up to this.
This brief blog just picks up on the fact that the purchase of power to make policy is often accompanied by the bestowing of other privileges: a quarter of the top Conservative Party donors have received honours or peerages.
According to the Byline Intelligence Team, more than a quarter of Conservative donors who have given more than £100,000 to the party hold a title or honour. Nineteen of 260 donors who gave more than £100,000 in a single donation hold life peerages. Twenty have been knighted and 14 hold ‘Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire’ (CBEs) (yes, read that again); and a further eight have OBEs.
Three-quarters of the party’s elite donors received these titles after the Conservatives came to power in 2010. Of the Conservative Party’s 20 biggest donors since 2010 – those donating more than £1.5 million – 55% have received an honour or title. Ten were given these ‘rewards’ in the last decade.
Unsurprisingly, older, white, male Londoners dominate.
No less unsurprisingly, It is not always obvious why the titles have been awarded, notwithstanding the associated rhetoric. The authors give the example of Ehud Sheleg, who was knighted in 2019, nominally in recognition of his ‘political and public service’. However Private Eye highlighted a string of ‘questionable activities’ carried out by Sheleg in the past decade. ‘These included tax evasion and a habit of dissolving companies to avoid liabilities. His service to political and public life is less clear. Shelag has donated more than £3.5 million since 2010.
Time, it’s surely reasonable to contend, not only to research wealthy owners of capital, but to redistribute their wealth, and while we are about it to get rid of the ludicrously corrupt honours system.