Nicholas Lezard's choice

Who Runs Britain?

Why 'Follow the money' is still good advice

Well, supposedly, Gordon Brown; but then who runs him? The most telling detail in this book about what's happened to the Labour party is a personal one. Robert Peston is the son of the life peer Lord Peston of Mile End, ennobled by Neil Kinnock. According to Peston Junior, a Labour functionary called to check that Peston had not made any substantial donation to Labour's coffers. Had he done so, there would have been no stoat coat for Peston Senior. But these days, and despite the notional illegality of the practice, it wouldn't appear that shovelling loads of money into the party bank account is too much of an obstacle to finding a parking space in the House of Lords.

  1. Who Runs Britain?
  2. by Robert Peston
  3. Find this on the Guardian bookshop

So while I recommend this book, I do so with my fingers pinching my nose shut. The stink of money-worship rises from its pages. Here is an extract from an interview with Sir Philip Green in 2004: "I said to my wife last Sunday morning - about a quarter to six I woke up - I said to Tina how lucky we have been to somehow get through this jungle to end up with a private business turning over £3bn, virtually no debt, nobody to answer to." Never mind the nauseating business of being the kind of monster who boasts of waking up at a quarter to six on a Sunday - think about Tina, who by extreme good fortune is a citizen of Monaco, and therefore does not contribute to this country's exchequer. And how much of Sir Philip's earnings actually go through her bank account? You'll find out here.

The book's title is actually a bit of a misnomer. The revolting plutocrats you find here don't really run Britain - they just sponge off it, bleed it dry and consider that as long as they're hardly paying any tax at all, and are left alone with "nobody to answer to", that's fine. Peston raises the spectre of their children deciding that it would be fun to enter politics and establish a proper plutocracy, but as a plutocracy is what, in effect, we already have (remember, we are dealing with a culture celebrated in magazines with titles such as Alpha), one wonders why they would bother.

The subtitle of this book is ... And Who's to Blame for the Mess We're In. Its original subtitle, when it came out in hardback in February, was How Britain's New Elite Are Changing Our Lives. Neither is fully accurate, but the later subtitle, although it looks somewhat opportunistic, is better, in that Peston really does name the guilty men. And if you're going to understand what it is they do, and how Blair and Brown roll over for them, then I am afraid you are going to have to read this.

But do not expect some kind of Pilgerian flaming sword of justice. Peston's dad may have been an Old Labour supporter who believed in the benevolence of the state and the inevitable rise of the equitable society, but little Robert, at some point nel mezzo del cammin di sua vita, decided that Margaret Thatcher's reforms were necessary, and so is rather beholden to the people whose careers he appraises and describes. At various points in the book he says that the striving for efficiency - that is, paying your cleaners less, paying your bills later and so on - is not necessarily a bad thing. And yet he does not, at least, condone their tax-avoidance, or indeed Labour's naive faith in the market. (Incidentally, do not expect any up-to-date stuff on "the economic mess we're in": here only Northern Rock has taken a battering. Merrill Lynch, HBOS and Lehman are all doing fine, and nor does he see any ill fortune for them in his crystal ball.)

But then if he didn't have sympathy for the financial world, he wouldn't have got the access or the insight he has. He is a very able explicator of how financial markets work. This is the kind of stuff that makes my eyes glaze over, but he manages, remarkably, to maintain the reader's attention. (Although one wearies, at times, of the parade of "hardly run-of-the-mill" wheeler-dealers; they're virtually all East End boys with colourful language and homespun philosophies.) It pains me to say it, but the fact that he's on their side means his criticisms might well carry more weight.

• To order Who Runs Britain? for £7.99 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875.

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