How is British presenter Piers Morgan getting on so far? This is one of the enduring mysteries of public life. I see him as a clown, a bully, and a fraud. But Morgan, who last week interviewed former Spanish Football Federation president Luis Rubiales, has risen like a methane bubble in chemical suspension, occupying some of the most prestigious and lucrative positions in the media despite starring in scandals that would have ended anyone’s career. career.

Magazine Private eye giving explanation last week in an article about the life and abuse of the wealthy Mohamed Al Fayed. The report quotes a text Morgan wrote in 1999 about Al Fayed: “I have always maintained a strict code of life to curry favor with three groups of people: newspaper owners, would-be newspaper owners, and billionaires. Considering Mohamed Al Fayed is a billionaire and wants to own newspapers, currying favor with him seems like a very sensible move.”

This strategy is not uncommon. What’s strange is saying it. Morgan loudly enunciated the unspoken rule of public life: If you want to rise, humble yourself to billionaires, especially if they own the media. The obvious conclusion: “That’s because they’re the ones with the real power.”

Rules that cannot be broken

Many rules are broken without consequences. As long as you serve to channel the demands of the richest, You may be in breach of BBC editorial guidelines appear in it without disclosing your financial interests. As long as you remain a loyal servant of the rich, you can violate parliamentary rules with impunity, lie, leave information about your interests without updating, or accepting a second job without permission at the end of your ministry career. What cannot be violated is Morgan’s rule. You should comply if you are a political party and want to get closer to power, or if you are a talk show host who wants to appear on the BBC. If you do not comply, you will be slandered or excommunicated.

Morgan and other journalists like him are members of concierge groups that offer a variety of services to economic powers. Among them are multimillion-dollar media heads and the Tufton Street think tank, which specializes in turning the unacceptable demands of oligarchs and corporations into politically sensible ones. They also serve to attack those who criticize the plutocrats and shift responsibility for what they do, placing it on immigration or the Labor Party, which is their classic scapegoat.

Then there are lobbyists. who specialize in image laundering by mediating the signing of agreements between evil plutocrats and cultural institutions (universities, museums, opera houses, and charities) who in return for large donations put their sponsors’ names on faculty, chairs, prizes, funds, and art galleries , turning ruthless kleptocrats into pillars of society.

Others are lawyers, accountants, bankers, and wealth managers who specialize in hiding and laundering their money; in purchasing special visas for them; or in prosecuting and harassing those who criticize them. That’s why organized crime loves London. They took advantage of Britain’s highly permissive financial laws as well as its highly repressive libel laws.

The government is always there to provide assistance. In 2021, when Rishi Sunak became chancellor of the exchequer, the late lawyer Yevgeny Prigozhin asked his ministry to lift sanctions against the leader of the violent Russian mercenary group Wagner, so they could prosecute investigative journalist Eliot Higgins. Sunak’s ministry granted the special permission requested and even approved flights to St. Petersburg in defiance of sanctions so they could plan their legal strategy.

This is how a few dozen people, aided by thousands of janitors, are able to dominate our lives. The system we call democracy is only a thin layer and a dent on the surface of oligarchic power.

Economic power translates into political power

Economic power is converted into political power through many mechanisms, and none of them is good for us. The most obvious is campaign finance. Sponsorship does not only apply to political parties, but also to entire systems of political thought and action. These transactions mean that the general interests of society are not in the minds of politicians. Some of the donations have been huge: last year, American website The Lever published details of the transfers for 1.3 billion dollars (approx. 1.22 billion euros) ordered by little-known billionaire Barre Seid for the benefit of a new interest group run by ultra-conservatives. How can ordinary citizens compete with that?

Financial power also ensures that in regulations supposedly designed to combat economic crime and profit laundering, there are legal loopholes wide enough for superyachts to slip through. In recent months, members of the House of Lords have sought to remove apparent obstacles to the Economic Crimes Bill before Parliament. The government has thwarted each of these efforts. In last Monday’s debate, Conservative MP Lord Agnew – who is the very different thing from a radical firebrand – complained that “the Government keeps saying one thing and then doing another”. Led by an oligarch and designed for oligarchs, the Sunak Government first announced with great fanfare that it would close these loopholes, and then subtly changed the law to keep it in place.

The power of money ensures that your environmental impact is limitless. Recently I was told about the case of a billionaire who wanted to fly to a luxury resort in his private jet. At the last minute he changed his mind and decided to go somewhere else where the landing strip was shorter. Because the weight of the loaded plane exceeded the weight permitted on the new runway, before takeoff he forced his engines to burn 15,000 dollars (about 14,000 euros) in fuel. Sunak treats Britain as an easy-to-reach country, using helicopters and private jets to travel to places easily reached by train. Like the less than 20 minute private flight that Kylie Jenner and Floyd Mayweather took. Each of them refutes the efforts of thousands of ordinary humans to live within the boundaries of a habitable planet.

But these specific impacts pale in comparison to the aggregate impact of their actions: the extraordinary way society at large reflects the preferences of the ultra-rich. Nearly everyone who participates in public life subscribes to the same absurd belief: that on a finite planet, economic growth can be sustained indefinitely; that the unhindered accumulation of enormous wealth by a few is acceptable, even laudable; that they may possess as much natural wealth as their money allows; that there is nothing objectionable about a handful of billionaires living in tax havens who own the media and set the political agenda; that anyone who questions these ideas has no place in civil society. We are free to talk up to there, but no further than that: the point on which everything hangs.

Morgan’s maxim is not just an unspoken rule. This is also a truth that cannot be expressed in words. Everyone knows it, but almost no one says it. This is what sustains our prestigious institutions, our legal codes, our manners, and our customs. It is that great silence that we must break.

George Monbiot is a columnist for Guard.

Translation by Francisco de Zárate.