The foundering ship of state

Henry Fairlie may have coined the phrase ‘The Establishment’ but it was Anthony Sampson who gave it flesh and blood. His Anatomy of Britain, first published in 1962 and revised at intervals over the years, sought to explain how Britain worked, where the power really lay, what covert networks underlay the at first impenetrable surface of society. Now the Sampsonian bear has emerged once more from its lair, sniffing the air uneasily, looking around for landmarks, rootling up the occasional corpse to see what is left upon its bones. The view is dramatically different; even what is superficially unchanged has in fact been profoundly modified.

In his first Anatomy Sampson depicted Britain’s Establishment as a set of intersecting circles of varying size loosely linked around a central vacuum. His corresponding model for 2004 shows many changes. The monarchy has been banished to the extreme periphery, the church and the aristocracy have vanished altogether. The armed forces continue to command popular respect in spite of their reluctance to observe the shibboleths of political correctitude, but they are seen as instruments of policy, not its formulators. Scientists, diplomats, trades unions, all play a diminished role.

Most significantly, parliament has almost ceased to count:

Television has taken over much of the role of political debating, sandwiched between coverage of sport and entertainment; and even during general election campaigns … politics have faded from the public consciousness.

Debates in the Houses of Lords and Commons are given only the most cursory coverage by the press; the best that the so-called ‘serious’ broadsheets customarily provide is a comic ‘sketch’, designed to entertain the reader and denigrate its subject.

Largely through the status and determination of the Chancellor himself, the Treasury plays a powerful part in the shaping of policy, but it has fallen prey to the professional economist and is more remote than ever from the people who actually make the money that it is supposed to manage.