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Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain
A devastating indictment of the corruption at the heart of the British State by one of our most popular media figures.George Monbiot made his name exposing the corruption of foreign governments; now he turns his keen eye on Britain. In the most explosive book on British politics of the new decade, Monbiot uncovers what many have suspected but few have been able to that corporations have become so powerful they now threaten the foundations of democratic government.Many of the stories George Monbiot recounts have never been told before, and they could scarcely be more embarrassing to a government that claims to act on behalf of all of us. Some are - or should be - resigning matters. Effectively, the British government has collaborated in its own redundancy, by ceding power to international bodies controlled by corporations. CAPTIVE STATE highlights the long term threat to our society and ultimately shows us ways in which we can hope to withstand the might of big business.
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
24 people are currently reading
984 people want to read
About the author
George Monbiot
43 books1,074 followersGeorge Joshua Richard Monbiot is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 24, 2021
Environmental (long before it became trendy) and political activist Monbiot's book examines the power, influence and 'threat' of corporate organisations in the UK. The book covers as diverse areas as the privatisation by creep of the National Health Service and individual national and local projects and how planning permission was 'gained'. Around these sort of areas I feel writers need to be able to make their work accessible to all parts of society, and although informative I felt that it felt too biased in that I didn't get enough to hear rationale for the corporates, although I accept this could be intentional on the corporates' behalf. 7 out of 12.
2003 read
2003 read
July 24, 2011
One of the great myths of contemporary politics is that the private sector is more efficient than the public, and that we can solve many of our current social ills by having the private sector do what the public sector is alleged to have failed at to do: let's see – the private sector goal is to make a profit for private owners; in the public, to deliver services in the common interest. Somehow the assumptions of the harness-the-private-sector approach to public service development seem flawed – George Monbiot shows us just how flawed with cases of hospitals that cost more for fewer beds and are less accessible, and the mass transfer of public assets (ours) to private hands (theirs). The detail, wth its focus on Blair & Brown's Private Finance Initiatives and so forth may have dated, the bigger picture has not.
June 9, 2014
An account of how big business has used its lobbying power and top-level contacts to shape UK policy and the economy in its favour.
If you ever wanted to know why the British government so rarely steers the country in the direction wished for by the general populace, this book contains a number of case studies that detail the corporate takeover that began under the Tories around the time of Thatcher and accelerated under Blair.
I cannot think of a book that has made me more angry or more worried about our future than this one.
This book only takes us up to around the year 2000 or so. I'd very much like to read a second volume bringing events up to the present day.
If you ever wanted to know why the British government so rarely steers the country in the direction wished for by the general populace, this book contains a number of case studies that detail the corporate takeover that began under the Tories around the time of Thatcher and accelerated under Blair.
I cannot think of a book that has made me more angry or more worried about our future than this one.
This book only takes us up to around the year 2000 or so. I'd very much like to read a second volume bringing events up to the present day.
March 10, 2017
Rarely has a book ever made me feel so angry and so damn impotent. Everything is for sale - they have patented human organs, charged hospitals for life saving research. Schools are now run by Tesco, and GM foods are awash with illegal poisons that can't even be labelled. The sheer hubris of the mega corporations beggars belief. Everything you ever feared about their internecine money spinning webs is true - demonstrably so. In a lot of hands this could have been a dry, turgid, regurgitation of numbers and dossiers but Monbiot has the soul of a poet which lends the book a real heart. A truly astonishing read, if not a comfortable one. Long live Robbie the Pict and his ilk.
October 30, 2021
Great Britain remains a self-confessed and highly proud land for being widely open to business and finance. It can make for Kafkaesque situations, such as when the mounted branch of the London Metropolitan police displayed the HSBC logo on its stirrups, or when the queen, during the Millennium, lighted up a firework starting by the giant letters 'BRITISH GAS' illuminating the sky. Such situations, highly ridiculous, can be funny. The journalist George Monbiot, though, starkly reminds us here that there really is nothing to laugh about.
Such silly facts, far from being isolated, reflect indeed for him the massive takeover exerted by corporates now invading even the pillars of our democracy. Here's the burning question, then: whose interests, exactly, are serving our governments? That of the citizens electing them? Or that of private and powerful companies snaking their way even into our laws? The multiple examples he offers leave us wondering, to say the least...
To clearly illustrate his point, he delves in here upon this very peculiar British way, radical and original, to finance most of our public services -the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Set up by the Tories and gone mad under the New Labour, such delegating of costs to private companies has had indeed a terrible impact from public transports to infrastructures, education, the NHS, the prison system, and, even, the development of public spaces, all fields and sectors where private interest (the race for profits) now dominate over public ones, to the point of clashing with them dangerously at times.
It's a worrying picture, yet George Monbiot refuses to be pessimistic. In fact, he claims that if such corporate became so powerful in the first place is because we, citizens, have too often let them and the politicians serving them get away with it all. All is not lost -political engagement and participation coupled with active pressuring campaigns to fight the issue can still make an impact. He, in fact, gives the example the massive protests which happened during the World Trade Organisation conference back in Seattle in 1999, and those results had even impacted the conference itself. Well...
It's a great eye-opener, and the pictures it offers are quite bleak despite the optimism of the author. Do we really have any said in the decisions concerning us all? Published in 2000, so before the 2008 financial crash, such optimism might have been relevant back then. From our vantage point, though, I believe it's quite clear by now that it has been dashed. It doesn't mean this book is irrelevant. In fact, if anything, it shows that the writing was on the wall long ago already. Tories, Labour: who cares? It's the same establishment, with the same interests, and run by oligarchs trapped in the same bubble away from the reality most of the rest of us experience. With public services on their knees, I don't think there's much left to save... Kafkaesque it was back then; Kafkaesque it will remains, then.
Such silly facts, far from being isolated, reflect indeed for him the massive takeover exerted by corporates now invading even the pillars of our democracy. Here's the burning question, then: whose interests, exactly, are serving our governments? That of the citizens electing them? Or that of private and powerful companies snaking their way even into our laws? The multiple examples he offers leave us wondering, to say the least...
To clearly illustrate his point, he delves in here upon this very peculiar British way, radical and original, to finance most of our public services -the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Set up by the Tories and gone mad under the New Labour, such delegating of costs to private companies has had indeed a terrible impact from public transports to infrastructures, education, the NHS, the prison system, and, even, the development of public spaces, all fields and sectors where private interest (the race for profits) now dominate over public ones, to the point of clashing with them dangerously at times.
It's a worrying picture, yet George Monbiot refuses to be pessimistic. In fact, he claims that if such corporate became so powerful in the first place is because we, citizens, have too often let them and the politicians serving them get away with it all. All is not lost -political engagement and participation coupled with active pressuring campaigns to fight the issue can still make an impact. He, in fact, gives the example the massive protests which happened during the World Trade Organisation conference back in Seattle in 1999, and those results had even impacted the conference itself. Well...
It's a great eye-opener, and the pictures it offers are quite bleak despite the optimism of the author. Do we really have any said in the decisions concerning us all? Published in 2000, so before the 2008 financial crash, such optimism might have been relevant back then. From our vantage point, though, I believe it's quite clear by now that it has been dashed. It doesn't mean this book is irrelevant. In fact, if anything, it shows that the writing was on the wall long ago already. Tories, Labour: who cares? It's the same establishment, with the same interests, and run by oligarchs trapped in the same bubble away from the reality most of the rest of us experience. With public services on their knees, I don't think there's much left to save... Kafkaesque it was back then; Kafkaesque it will remains, then.
March 25, 2016
Now Angrier Than Ever! Many layers are here peeled away from the rotting vegetable called the Westminster.
By the way, Austin Westminsters were powerful six cylinder cars for the senior, but not boardroom level managers of the upper-middle echelons of British road hoggery in the 1950's and 60's. The Cambridge on the other hand was a four cylinder car equivalent to the later Cortina. Why I am saying this? I am too angry to do anything, except revert to a a kind of childhood-dream state where cars had names that you could understand, people 'knew their place' cf. any John Buchan novel, boundaries were clear, you had to 'fit in' or 'ship out' to what was left of the colonies, then come skulking back and perhaps join the burgeoning Underground, which turned out to be hedonism lightly tossed with a sprinkling of cynicism; add some freshly ground nihilism and serve. Please do read this book, it's a bit out of date but as it was so far ahead of it's time then, that it's all right now.
By the way, Austin Westminsters were powerful six cylinder cars for the senior, but not boardroom level managers of the upper-middle echelons of British road hoggery in the 1950's and 60's. The Cambridge on the other hand was a four cylinder car equivalent to the later Cortina. Why I am saying this? I am too angry to do anything, except revert to a a kind of childhood-dream state where cars had names that you could understand, people 'knew their place' cf. any John Buchan novel, boundaries were clear, you had to 'fit in' or 'ship out' to what was left of the colonies, then come skulking back and perhaps join the burgeoning Underground, which turned out to be hedonism lightly tossed with a sprinkling of cynicism; add some freshly ground nihilism and serve. Please do read this book, it's a bit out of date but as it was so far ahead of it's time then, that it's all right now.
May 10, 2017
Although published in 2000, George Monbiot's meticulous research gives him an almost prophetic visionary grasp of the world of international politics and the encroachment of big business into every sphere of the establishment, so it's relevant still, and ever more urgent in 2017. There are moments of poetry through his wonderful use of language, as there are many moments of sheer outrage at all the hidden machinations he exposes so ruthlessly. The final paragraphs remind readers that it is down to us as citizens to resist the relentless takeover of our planet by the corporate elite. An inspiring, vital, captivating read. Highly recommend to the 99%.
December 10, 2019
Reading an 18 year old current affairs book at first seemed a preposterous exercise. However the song appears to remain the same. The captive state described appears now to have become all pervasive and we as a nation have managed to sleep walked into corporate entrapment on almost every level of our lives.
Corporate State maanges to explain exactly how big business has consumed our lives, our government and our very soul. A book to make your blood boil - the irony of course being that the review is being posted on an Amazon owned site. Doubtless all data willingly left will be monetised before being used to bombard me with offers for shit I do not want, need or require. Happy days....
Corporate State maanges to explain exactly how big business has consumed our lives, our government and our very soul. A book to make your blood boil - the irony of course being that the review is being posted on an Amazon owned site. Doubtless all data willingly left will be monetised before being used to bombard me with offers for shit I do not want, need or require. Happy days....
May 18, 2012
This book was written in 2000, but everything within still rings true today- if not more so.
There are many of us who have known what is going on in Britain for a long time, but there are many more who choose to stick their heads in the sand or marginalise those in the know as crackpot conspiracy theorists.
I wish they would read this book. It would, or should, make them angry. What has happened, not just in Britain, these past few decades is nothing short of a scandal. The more people become aware, the more people might become agitated enough to start doing something on a bigger scale.
There is a lot in here to be get angry about: the strongarm tactics & political lobbying by corporations such as Monsanto, the corporate takeover of Universities & the resulting concerns over freedom of research & the way planning permission can, for all intent and purposes, be bought.There is also a section on the way my local council, Southampton City, lied & rode roughshod over residents' wishes & systematically dismantled a centuries old market in the heart of the city- all in the name of 'progress' & so a few men in suits could make a quid or two.
Thank God for investigative writers like Monbiot.
Read his book. Get angry. Do something.
There are many of us who have known what is going on in Britain for a long time, but there are many more who choose to stick their heads in the sand or marginalise those in the know as crackpot conspiracy theorists.
I wish they would read this book. It would, or should, make them angry. What has happened, not just in Britain, these past few decades is nothing short of a scandal. The more people become aware, the more people might become agitated enough to start doing something on a bigger scale.
There is a lot in here to be get angry about: the strongarm tactics & political lobbying by corporations such as Monsanto, the corporate takeover of Universities & the resulting concerns over freedom of research & the way planning permission can, for all intent and purposes, be bought.There is also a section on the way my local council, Southampton City, lied & rode roughshod over residents' wishes & systematically dismantled a centuries old market in the heart of the city- all in the name of 'progress' & so a few men in suits could make a quid or two.
Thank God for investigative writers like Monbiot.
Read his book. Get angry. Do something.
December 19, 2018
This book covers many case studies which give an understanding of how corporations have been able to manipulate public policy into their favour. It gives detailed examples of how PFI agreements are made, how planning permission can be bought with legal bribery, how genetic engineering companies have been able to lower sales standards and patent genes (read if you want to understand what it means to patent a gene), and how global trade agreements such as NAFTA have given corporations huge unaccountable power such as the ability to privately sue governments for merely attempting to improve standards of products sold in the countries they govern.
January 3, 2019
Marvellous ... i read it in 2001 but it is worrying how much has come true - and that I understand it all so much better now.
Everyone should read - it is eminently readable and gives us so much knowledge we can use.
Everyone should read - it is eminently readable and gives us so much knowledge we can use.
July 28, 2011
What we have always sort of known. They own us!
August 30, 2012
Monbiot really is a 'Marmite' person for me. He equally inspires and infuriates with some of his views but I wholehearted agreed with this book as my first introduction to his writing.
February 8, 2016
I loved this book and I review it here: https://onlyanatheist.wordpress.com/2...
June 30, 2016
essential reading for anyone who wants to know why life in the UK is as it is.
July 9, 2018
Essential reading and just the precursor to even more essential reading.
June 13, 2022
As a subscriber to Private Eye magazine this book left me with a similar sense of the outrage i get from their regular rouges gallery that is their Rotten Boroughs section … Monbiot uses examples such as the PFI financed and privately built Skye bridge, to highlight how our democracy has been co-opted by business and corporations for their gain at the expense of the wider public good, and how these tendrils of influence have spread across much of public life to the detriment of democracy… as an explainer as to the motivations of those who protest against globalisation I found it enlightening and informative.
June 27, 2023
Even the author admits it was a slog, as he went through the tale of how private finance took the strain off the public purse in the 1990s. He's very good at detailing the revolving door between government and industry, and the opening chapters on the Skye Bridge, Coventry Hospital and redevelopment of St Mary in Southampton show how elected officials don't pay attention to the electorate. The stories reverberate in an era of tech states but it also feels part of a different age.
December 21, 2022
This book made me feel quite depressed. I could only read a bit at a time because of the sense of hopelessness it engendered.
My conclusion is that politically broadly nothing has changed in 150 years - the people with power manipulate the public to make them think they have some say in the way the country is run - to make it a fairer society. This book disabused me of that.
My conclusion is that politically broadly nothing has changed in 150 years - the people with power manipulate the public to make them think they have some say in the way the country is run - to make it a fairer society. This book disabused me of that.
November 3, 2025
These books always help me make sense of the world. Everyone is currently wanting Labour out for their lies and broken promises, this book highlights many of them from their last term, they highlight how history just repeats itself and corruption will ALWAYS win
May 18, 2016
Captive.
February 11, 2021
The UK is getting rinsed.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews