Britain's Power Elites is an eye-opener.

A compelling read...brilliant description and analysis of what passes for modern Britain.

A vivid and detailed picture of the grotesque concentration of
power and wealth in this country.I recommend this book unreservedly

The order that governed Britain is dead - this book reveals our new rulers. Since 1979 this country has undergone a revolution. It was a very British affair - certainly no tanks on the streets and precious little violent agitation. But first under Thatcher, then Blair, the post-war consensus has given way to a brand new political order. The language of global competition, of historical inevitability and of national destiny has provided cover for a power grab more complete and more ruthless than any since the English Civil War. The discretion with which this has been accomplished has left commentators baffled. Never exactly open, Britain has become a mystery to its own inhabitants. What is starkly clear is that amid the fantasies of the heritage industry, Victorian, even Georgian, inequalities of wealth and status are back, though the arguments used to justify them have changed. Hywel Williams offers an exhilaratingly clear-eyed analysis. He reveals how power has left the regions and the upholders of the constitution, and the facade of power at Westminster has become a distraction from elite activity that happens elsewhere - a decorative rather than effective part of public life.

Alone of imperial cadres, the capital's money men have flourished in the modern era. They grasped the new opportunities that emerged and they have seen off or subverted any attempts to curtail their freedom. The City has killed its rivals and everyone has been too polite to mention it. It's time to be clear about exactly who does run this place.

2006-08-03 Excellent study of Britain's ruling class

This extraordinary book by Hywel Williams, a historian, journalist and broadcaster, vividly presents the new, post-1979 shape of the British ruling class. Unlike most surveys of Britain, by for example, Anthony Sampson, Will Hutton or Jeremy Paxman, he concludes that there is indeed a ruling class in Britain, though he swaddles this in the misleading phrase `power elites'.

He shows how this class is abandoning Britain and so is not a `British' class any more: "Britain, increasingly, has an elite whose attitudes are `offshore' and disconnected from the business of being British." They "have largely lost any sense of Britain as a national project and are largely disengaged from it."

He depicts the political elite, now more centralised than ever before in the House of Commons. He shows how governments and parliamentary parties all embrace the interests of finance capital. He also examines the professional elites, especially business consultants, IT firms, university vice-chancellors and City lawyers.

But the core of this book, as of the ruling class, is the financial and business elite. Williams shows us "the core competence of the City of London: reckless gambling on the one hand and well-spoken, beautifully suited, sharp practice on the other." He notes, "The rest of London - indeed the rest of Britain - could disappear tomorrow and the City would carry on functioning quite happily."

He shows how globalised capital, with its compulsory free movements of capital and labour, has produced ever greater wealth at one pole of society. In 2002, Britain's richest 5% owned 43% of Britain's total wealth, up from 36% in 1986, and they owned 62% of disposable wealth (i.e. less the value of homes), up from 46% in 1986.

But at the other pole of society, where the rest of us live, globalised capital has produced greater relative poverty. There are now eight million people with debts of more than £10,000, four million of whom owe more than £20,000. British homes are 70% dearer in relation to wages than they were in 2000; the average house costs six times the average income, seven times as much in London and the south-east.

Williams details "the elite's collective crassness, brutality and selfishness". He shows how the rulers "have proved to be the destroyers of the democratic aspiration and effective debate which should lie at the heart of an open society." He sums up, "Britain has allowed its power elites to effect a transformation which amounts to the degradation of an entire country."

The ruling class's pretence that their profit is our good has worn out. Williams has grasped what he calls, "the truth beneath the surface, even a surface as polished, pitiless and remorseless as the one presented to us by our power elites. After all, the more concentrated and extreme a form of power becomes then the more vigorously it digs, eventually, its own grave."