The Prime Minister said the other day that Donald Trump’s victory had strengthened his resolve not to become part of ‘the Establishment’. Rather, he would work to ‘change it from within’. A short while later, the Leader of the Opposition tweeted that the Prime Minister was the Establishment, and had been so for almost four years.
Except both were tilting at windmills, because the establishment does not really exist. It is undeniable that the idea of a tenebrous underworld of shadowy power holders and brokers makes a fine story, especially at a time of year when confectionery comes in the shape of bones and people look to darkness for inspiration.
But then The Da Vinci Code was read by millions as a masterclass of investigative journalism.
Not surprisingly, the idea of an establishment – almost always linked to a definite article and sometimes spelt with a capital ‘E’ for extra effect – looms large in the British public’s imagination.
Its stomping grounds are thought to include public schools, Oxbridge and London gentlemen’s clubs of the kind where underwear means just that.
It is in such places that initiates take part in strange rituals like fagging and formal hall. At the topmost end, country house parties and shooting weekends add an Edwardian flavour.
When not busy reading ironed newspapers or eating lobster omelettes, the establishment likes to run the country and to control who gets what. This usually means the sons (and daughters, occasionally) of the inner circle, who are leap-frogged into key posts in the civil service, the law courts, political office, and such. In sum, the establishment is a chesterfield-sofa world of closely-guarded privilege.
Based on this British model – a caricature, arguably – we can get to work on a definition of the word. The establishment is a barnacled power elite that is as long-armed as it is shrouded in cigar smoke and inscrutable. Its influence is particularly strong in the fields of politics, the media, the judiciary and business.
Although it will recruit when necessary, heredity is its most trusted ally; in this and other things, it displays a kind of allegiance that is almost tribal. Largely impenetrable, it tends to close ranks when threatened. Respectability, or a veneer of it, is the rule at all times.
There is no such thing as a single unidentified power elite that controls most of what really matters
This, then, is what the Prime Minister does not want to become part of. It is interesting that he should imagine that he is as yet an outsider who can choose whether or not to belong, but never mind. The point is that the establishment does not exist, neither in Malta nor probably in Britain.
Certainly not in the singular. There is no such thing as a single unidentified power elite that controls most of what really matters. As summoned by the Prime Minister, it is simply a rhetorical sleight. A very convenient one, too, because it enables the powerful to have fingers in all pies while disowning their hands.
Take the judiciary. There is no hidden establishment that wields power in that department even as it appoints professors at university, top civil servants, and so on. There is, however, a studied effort to build power in judicial circles. It’s extremely transparent, is called politics, and is held by the Prime Minister, who in three years has appointed three Labour Party people to the bench.
Another example is that of the public service. There was a time when civil servants could work their way up the ranks through seniority and internal exams. That system, which was fair if a tad drawn-out, is now thoroughly in tatters as civil servants are kangarooed into their posts or bossed around by persons of trust. It is not some occult establishment that is responsible for this, but rather a very visible hand that answers to the name of Politics. In this case it too is ultimately the responsibility of the Prime Minister.
There would be other examples at hand – things like accounts in Panama and so on. Not a whiff of lobster omelette there, either; in fact, it’s the same recognisable bunch of politicians. But that story is well known.
All of which leads to two conclusions.
First, there is no such thing as a single establishment. If we must use that word, it would be to describe the many sectorial power elites whose networks often cross paths but are ultimately separate species. The power of the judiciary, say, is different to that of the public service. The academy has little to do with business. And so on.
And yet, there is something that connects them, at times loosely and at others less so. That something is political power. The Prime Minister, for example, has the effective power to appoint judges and top civil servants, but he is also the leader of a party that has close funding and other connections to big business interests.
To call him ‘the establishment’ would be to deflect attention to a non-existent cabal, and in so doing to relieve him of political responsibility. No wonder he himself is so keen to talk about the establishment. When something is not really there, it is easy not to belong to it.
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