Capital is Mobilising

Get ready for a very long read.

I have been developing a little theory about modern politics. It began as the vague feeling that when one reads the news, the argument always seems to be taking place on the wrong floor of the building. Downstairs everyone is shouting about migrants and dinghies. Meanwhile upstairs, rather quietly, the real rearranging of furniture is going on with tax rules, regulation, media ownership and the movement of capital.

For much of the twentieth century British politics operated with a rough balance between organised labour and organised capital. Trade unions mobilised millions of voters and exercised real political influence, while business interests supplied investment and economic power. The arrangement was not elegant, but it functioned as a counterweight. From the end of the Second World War through the 1970s inequality narrowed and living standards rose rapidly. For ordinary households it produced the fastest sustained rise in living standards since the industrial revolution first pushed incomes off the flat line they had occupied for centuries.

But that prosperity produced an unexpected political consequence. Rising wages, expanding professional employment and widespread home ownership created a large new asset-owning middle class. People who had benefited from the post-war settlement now had houses, pensions and savings to protect. Once voters acquire assets, their political priorities often change. Concerns about inflation, taxation and economic stability begin to matter more than the collective institutions that helped produce the earlier prosperity.

In that sense the political shift of the 1980s did not come from nowhere. Margaret Thatcher did not simply impose a new settlement from above. She mobilised a coalition of voters whose economic position had been transformed by the post-war boom. Many professionals, homeowners and skilled workers had climbed the ladder that the earlier system built, and once they had done so they became more receptive to dismantling parts of it. In effect, a generation that had benefited from the ladder helped pull up the drawbridge behind it. I know this because it was my generation and my parents' generation.

From the 1980s onwards that equilibrium steadily eroded. Union membership declined sharply and political parties became professional campaign organisations rather than mass membership movements. As labour’s organisational power weakened, the political system did not become neutral. The space was filled by concentrated wealth and donor networks capable of funding parties, think tanks and campaign infrastructure on a scale that would once have been unusual.

This shift coincided with wider structural changes in the economy and the media system. Financial markets were liberalised, capital became far more mobile and media industries underwent waves of consolidation. The result was an environment in which large pools of private capital could exert greater influence over both economic policy and the channels through which political narratives reached the public.

At the same time the structure of the information system narrowed. Around eighty to ninety percent of national newspaper circulation is controlled by a small number of wealthy proprietors. The BBC still exists as a public counterweight, but it now operates in a permanently politicised environment where governments lean on it, newspapers attack it and senior appointments pass through political filters. The result is not a propaganda outlet but a cautious broadcaster aware that one perceived misstep can unleash a week of hostile headlines.

Meanwhile the economic foundations of journalism have been quietly eroded. Advertising migrated to digital platforms, local newspapers collapsed and national newsrooms shrank. Investigative reporting is expensive and slow, and it has been one of the first casualties. When fewer journalists are available to challenge claims and follow complicated stories, the political environment changes. It becomes easier for politicians to say almost anything and correct the record later, if at all.

The same tension is visible in debates about education. Some political movements now advocate a more “patriotic” national curriculum focused on national pride and identity. Teaching national history is not the problem. The revealing point is what tends to disappear. A curriculum centred on critical thinking trains citizens to question evidence and test political claims. One centred primarily on patriotic narratives trains them to absorb and repeat them. In an era that increasingly rewards simple stories over careful analysis, the distinction matters.

At the same time a different media culture has developed around what might be called client journalism. Some politicians now prefer outlets that repeat narratives sympathetically rather than journalists who interrogate them. When challenged, the response is often to attack the source rather than the claim. A poll becomes invalid because of who commissioned it. A journalist becomes biased for asking an awkward question.

This environment suits populist politics extremely well.

One of the most important discoveries made by modern insurgent movements is that winning power is not always necessary to reshape politics. Control of the agenda can be enough. If one issue dominates public attention, the rest of the political landscape recedes.

Immigration performs this function almost perfectly. Migration is a real policy issue, but it also produces vivid images and emotionally powerful narratives. Boats arriving on beaches create a story that can be repeated endlessly.

Once immigration dominates the political conversation, other subjects quietly retreat from view. Tax structures, regulatory frameworks, capital mobility, media ownership and donor influence begin to look like technical details compared with the daily theatre of borders and boats.

It is the political equivalent of everyone crowding downstairs to argue about the noise while the furniture upstairs is quietly being removed.

What is really happening is that three different political systems are operating at once. Cultural issues such as immigration supply the political energy. Donor economics supplies the policy agenda. And the modern media environment supplies the narrative infrastructure that allows the two to reinforce each other.

The deeper irony is that the same political ecosystem that obsesses over human mobility pays remarkably little attention to capital mobility. Immigration dominates political debate, yet the movement of wealth across borders rarely attracts sustained scrutiny. A billionaire relocating to Monaco for tax reasons can cost the Treasury far more revenue than thousands of migrants entering the labour market. Yet one produces months of headlines while the other is treated as a sensible financial decision.

In some cases the contradiction is almost comic. People who denounce migrants for crossing borders in search of opportunity will enthusiastically defend a billionaire doing exactly the same thing for tax reasons. Cultural rhetoric about immigration mobilises voters so effectively that it obscures far larger economic decisions being made elsewhere.

At the same time new forms of financial power have entered politics. Parts of the populist right have developed close relationships with cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and technology billionaires who see themselves as outsiders to the traditional political establishment. Wealth from these sectors increasingly funds media platforms, campaign organisations and political movements.

Alongside this sits a growing network of think tanks and advocacy groups shaping policy debates from outside formal party structures.

The modern right itself is not a single ideological project. Populist mobilisation around immigration now sits uneasily alongside more traditional centre-right economic thinking, a tension illustrated by initiatives such as Prosper, which seek to pull Conservative politics back toward a more conventional pro-business centre-right position.

Meanwhile other powerful interests have long understood the value of narrative control. Fossil fuel companies have spent decades funding lobbying, think tanks and media campaigns aimed at delaying climate policy. The strategy has shifted over time from outright denial to economic alarmism, framing climate action as a threat to jobs, growth or household bills. Delay becomes extremely valuable if your business model depends on selling fossil fuels.

This creates a comfortable position for political movements that operate primarily through agenda setting rather than governance. They can dominate headlines and mobilise supporters without demonstrating how their promises would survive contact with reality.

Governments operate under constraints that opposition movements rarely acknowledge. Laws exist. Courts intervene. Budgets impose limits. Bureaucracies move slowly. The populist narrative assumes that political will alone can sweep these obstacles aside.

In practice it cannot.

The moment an insurgent movement actually holds power, the gap becomes visible. Rhetoric collides with institutions and promises encounter fiscal arithmetic. Donald Trump’s war with Iran illustrates the problem in real time. What began as decisive campaign rhetoric has turned into the sort of complex regional conflict governments always discover once the missiles start flying.

Which brings me to a personal suspicion about Nigel Farage. I increasingly suspect that he understands this dynamic perfectly well. The optimal position for a populist insurgent may not be inside government at all. It may be just outside the door, close enough to influence the agenda but far enough away to avoid responsibility.

From that vantage point the insurgent can steadily pull the political centre of gravity in a particular direction. Mainstream parties adjust their rhetoric to compete and gradually the entire conversation shifts.

The insurgent wins without governing.

The consequences eventually show up in everyday life. Deregulation leads to rivers filled with sewage because dumping waste becomes cheaper than fixing infrastructure. Tax cuts without replacement revenue hollow out public services until hospitals, courts and councils struggle to function. Delaying Net Zero leaves economies dependent on fossil fuel markets and therefore hostage to geopolitical shocks.

Foreign policy decisions have consequences too. Wars destroy infrastructure, destabilise regions and displace populations. Most of the world’s refugees come from a relatively small number of conflicts in places such as Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan and Ukraine. The vast majority remain in neighbouring countries, but the pressures created by those conflicts inevitably ripple outward and eventually reach Europe.

In other words, some of the same political forces that promise to stop migration can end up helping to create the conditions that drive it.

And while the argument downstairs continues about migrants and borders, the furniture upstairs continues to move quietly out of the window.

By the time anyone notices, the removal van will already be halfway down the road, with a surprising number of voters still arguing about the dinghy.