Key Findings

• A twenty-year rise in unelected influence: Our Concentration of Power Index tracks the alignment of party capture, media control, and unelected appointments between 2001 and 2022. Looking at its components: membership of the House of Lords has increased from an average of 676 members in 2001-2003 to 803 members in 2020-2022; large political donations (of more than £250k) rose from £7.6m in 2002 to more than £47m in 2019; the media share of the top three conglomerates rose from 71% in 2014 when the data series began, to 90% in 2022. The Concentration of Power Index synthesises the trends in these key variables into a simple metric, which shows a marked increase and entrenchment in the political influence of the ultra-rich and powerful over the past two decades.
• Wealth concentration moves in step with unelected influence: The Concentration of Power Index rises almost exactly in step with increases in the top 1% share of wealth. As the ultra-rich grow richer, political influence, authority, and power increasingly aligns with them.
• Wealth, not income, is the main driver: The correlation between political influence and wealth inequality (particularly the top 1% share) is strong and statistically significant, while the same is not true for income inequality. Wealth accumulation, rather than wages, is the more relevant driver of the concentration of power.
• Outsized influence is now cemented control: Despite repeated public alarms, the overall trajectory shows no signs of reversing. Britain’s democratic architecture has become more susceptible to unelected influence, now hardening into systemic dominance, while countervailing forces such as trade unions, local journalism, and civic organisations have weakened.

Concentration of Power Index

The Concentration of Power Index combines three key channels of unelected influence: appointments to the House of Lords, media ownership, and party donations, into one composite metric, showing how they have increased over the past two decades. There is ultimately a sustained strengthening of moneyed influence across these channels. 

Figure 1  tracks the change in the concentration of power over time. The index climbed  steadily from 2001 to 2022. This represents a structural recentring of influence by the wealthy elite: what used to appear as exceptional episodes of lobbying expenditure, media bias, or patronage appointments now defines the normal operating environment of British democracy. 

Figure 2 reveals how this consolidation of power and unelected influence aligns with wealth concentration. The share of national wealth held by the top 1% is strongly and significantly correlated with the Concentration of Power Index. Years in which the wealthiest 1% hold even more also tend to be years when unelected influence is higher, and this relationship remains robust even after outliers are removed.

By contrast, income inequality is not strongly correlated with the Concentration of Power Index – a weak positive association is seen only with the Top 1% Income Share – suggesting that wealth, not income, is the prime engine of political inequality and that tackling obscene wealth remains the major policy priority.  It is also the case that income inequality has fluctuated only modestly since the 1990s, while wealth inequality has surged, and with it the capacity to shape policy.

Together, these findings reveal more than just a rise in material wealth accumulation. They show how the architecture that allows concentrated wealth to influence politics has grown stronger and more aligned since the turn of the century,  moving from transactional to structural. Despite alarm bells ringing for decades after the massive rise of inequality under Thatcher, there is no sign of this trend reversing, shrinking, or being undone. What was once outsized influence has ballooned into cemented control. Wealth does not merely buy access, but is firmly woven into the fabric of governance.

What is Considered Corruption?

Corruption is often imagined as an exchange of money for favour, resulting in outright illegal and criminal wrongdoing. A deeper examination of corruption requires us to consider a more enduring form, where corruption is structural. This legal, but equally damaging, operation moves through the routine circulation of wealth accumulation, access, and favour. Institutions adapt to be more responsive to and serve concentrated wealth, rather than the needs of ordinary residents. With this understanding, the UK is exhibiting a slow-moving, legalistic form of corruption. Party donations are dominated by a handful of financiers, all major newspapers are now owned by only three conglomerates, and the upper legislature is unelected and swelling.

In the sections that follow, we examine how each of the examined strands functions as a conduit for unelected power, authority, and influence. Political finance reveals how parties and politicians can become structurally indebted to donors, media ownership demonstrates how concentrated wealth controls narrative formation and public agenda-setting, and appointments to the House of Lords expose the persistence of patronage in a supposedly meritocratic democracy. These are not aberrations but outcomes of an economic system that rewards accumulation and enables its holders to shape the very rules of that system. Understanding these mechanisms is essential to confronting that the deeper corruption of democratic equality is indeed wealth inequality.

Unelected Appointments

With nearly 800 eligible sitting members, the UK currently has the second-largest legislative chamber in the world, surpassed only by China’s National People’s Congress (with a comparative population of over one billion). Despite a sharp reduction prior to the 2000s, it has again ballooned from an average of 676 members between 2001 and 2003 to an average of 803 members between 2020 and 2022. There is no upper limit on its size, and every new batch of appointments raises questions around patronage and party reward.

In Britain’s unusual system of Upper House selection, money doesn’t just buy access to legislators but goes further so that donors themselves can become the legislators. Financial support for parties translates into life peerages, granting unelected individuals enduring legislative power. The effect is cumulative, with a chamber increasingly shaped by the wealthy few rather than the electorate at large. Indeed, when the ‘usual suspects’ for a position, like former MPs and party workers, are accounted for, donations play an outsize role in accounting for the remaining peers.⁴ Essentially, Britain’s Upper house is vulnerable to, and is being sold to, wealthy donors who hold power to revise and delay crucial legislative changes.

Political Party Capture

Political finance data reveal how Britain’s major parties have become structurally indebted to a narrow pool of wealthy donors. Between 2001 and 2010, just a few hundred large gifts (from less than 60 sources and each exceeding £250,000) accounted for around 40 % of all declared funding received by the Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Democrat parties.⁵

By 2019, 60% of all party donations came from individuals rather than organisations.⁶ Nearly half were provided by super-donors contributing over £100,000 or more in a single year.⁷ This means the funding base has narrowed even as disclosure rules have improved, leaving parties increasingly reliant on a handful of wealthy benefactors.

This dependency skews responsiveness, as parties become accountable to funders rather than voters. The UK remains one of only six countries worldwide that imposes caps on campaign spending but not on donations.⁸ Corporate–political links further blur the line between support and reward: since 2000, “giver-and-taker” companies have donated £47 million to major parties and received contracts worth over £1,294 for every £1 donated, with nearly one in ten securing a major contract within two years of their gift.⁹

Media Oligopoly

The national press has become sharply more concentrated. Although the press should function as an open forum of ideas, Britain now has a media ecosystem where a few private empires act as both gatekeepers and participants in political life. In 2014, three conglomerates—Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, Lord Rothermere’s DMG Media (Daily Mail Group), and Reach plc (Mirror, Express and Star)—already dominated, controlling about 71% of national daily circulation. By 2019, following further takeovers, their share had risen to 83%; by 2022, to roughly 90%. That 20 percentage-point climb in less than a decade represents the steepest consolidation in modern British media history.

This is an oligopoly dominated by a small number of owners, dubbed ‘the billionaire press’, whose financial and policy interests extend well beyond journalism. The national press remains a primary vehicle for shaping public opinion and framing policy debate, but when this control narrows, so does legislative decision-making that requires a plurality of viewpoints. Content analyses show that dominant owners, especially Murdoch, have exploited their outlets to promote ideological positions (mainly right-wing political parties and leaders), promote his own corporate and commercial interests, and attack institutional rivals and regulators.¹⁰ This circularity means that British media shapes the opinions that in turn shape the policies from which billionaire owners benefit.

Drivers of Wealth Inequality

Our analysis shows that the consolidation of political influence tracks closely with wealth inequality.

The wealthy hold their assets in pensions, property, and financial markets that have expanded far faster than wages. In the UK, workers are enduring the longest pay squeeze in over 200 years, while billionaire fortunes grow by US$2.7 billion per day.^{11 12}Since the 1960s, around 60% of total economic growth has gone to the top 1%, and since 1980, the top 10% have more than doubled their share of national wealth, while real earnings have largely stalled.

This concentration is fuelled by asset inflation and financialisation: the steady rise in property and equity values disproportionately benefits those who already own them. Privatisation and deregulation have further deepened the divide, converting public goods into private assets and multiplying the stakes of political influence. Weak tax regimes, inheritance loopholes, and property have entrenched intergenerational advantage. Wealthy individuals and corporations not only have more to protect but more means to influence how that protection is legislated. Their wealth now functions as both the engine and the shield of inequality, generating returns that protect itself while hollowing out the institutions, from unions to local journalism, that once kept economic power in check.