News International and corporate power in Britain’s democracy: just the tip of the ‘unelected oligarchies’ iceberg

The News International scandal has rightly caused public outrage and led to a sea-change in relations between UK politicians and media moguls. Yet Murdoch’s empire has been only part of a much wider structure of unaccountable power which has exercised a dominant influence over British politics and policy making in the past two decades or more. David Beetham argues that this ‘unelected oligarchy’ extends to the corporate sector as a whole, including the major financial and banking institutions.