When I say the word 'oligarchs'
lots of people immediately assume 
that I'm talking about Russians.
But actually there are oligarchs
everywhere and in countries like ours,
those oligarchs exert inordinate power
over our political systems.
So look at the UK where people like
Rupert Murdoch & the Barclay brothers,
through controlling the media are able
to impose their views on other people,
to the extent that they swing elections.
How are they able to do so?
Is this because they have more
votes then other people?
Is this because they have more
democratic legitimacy?
No, it's simply because they
 have more money.
They use their economic power and
translate it into political power,
which is what oligarchs do the world
over and it's reached the point,
that unless Rupert Murdoch is on your
side you are highly unlikely
to win a general election and form the
next government in this country.
To an extraordinary inordinate degree
he controls the political life
of this nation that is a classic
oligarchic position.
We also see oligarchy exercise through
the funding of political parties,
a tiny handful of people can provide
almost all the funding for a political party,
and this is indeed what happens.
We have seen how property developers
and landowners have poured £11 million
into the Conservative party since Boris
Johnson became prime minister,
and it looks as if that will yield
them billions of pounds in profit.
Because one of the things that Boris
Johnson now proposes to do,
is to dismantle the planning system
to allow them to build
in some parts of the country
pretty well anything, anywhere.
What we see happening here, in the
United States, in many other countries
around the world is that a nominally
democratic country falls prey
to oligarchy, to the inordinate power
of those with a great deal of money.
There are a number of ways in which
oligarchs discipline politics
and one of them is
the revolving door.
Classic example is the former Chancellor
of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom
Sajid Javid who's gone straight into one
of the biggest and most ruthless
financial institutions in the City of London
which happens to have benefited
massively from his policies
while he was in power.
And we see this happening again
and again ministers effectively
do favours to particular corporate
sectors when they're in power
and then as soon as they lose
their ministerial positions
they go into those corporate sectors
where they are in effect rewarded
for services rendered with massively
lucrative contracts.
They know that if they want to have
an extremely rich retirement,
they've got to transmit those favours to
big corporations while they're in office.
And so this is a subtle and insidious
way in which oligarchy gets its claws,
into democracy and turns politics
in the direction it wishes.
This isn't even a party matter
we see people from across
the political spectrum going straight
into lucrative directorships
when they leave politics.
We saw it with Tony Blair big time
tens of millions of pounds he's made
from his corporate engagements
subsequent to being Prime Minister.
We've seen it with Peter
Mandelson his enforcer
who has similarly massively
enriched himself.
We see a whole series in government
after government of ministers
moving into the sectors that
they previously regulated,
having while in office
given those sectors,
everything they wanted
on a silver platter.
It is profoundly undemocratic,
but it is how politics has come
to work in this country.
What we must do if we
are to reclaim politics,
is to reclaim it from the oligarchy.
We have to understand that oligarchs
are not just Russians,
oligarchs are in countries
all over the world
bleeding those countries of cash and
bleeding them of political legitimacy.
As they replace democracy
with oligarchy,
we must overthrow the oligarchs 
and restore democracy.
One of the reasons I work
with Double Down News,
is it's one of the very few broadcast
outlets for big ideas.
I can't get this stuff on the BBC or indeed
any other mainstream broadcaster.
If you want to talk about the
big normative questions,
Double Down News
is the place to do it.
So please support Double Down
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and allow these big
issues to be aired.
