WHAT ABOUT SIR HUMPHREY?

Anthony Sampson says the new list of Anthony Sampson says the new list of

Britain's 300 most powerful people confuses power with celebrity

HAS the world of celebs, media and show- biz finally merged with the world of politi- cal power to provide a single countdown of top of the pops? That's the clear message of the Observer's list last Sunday of the 300 most powerful people in Britain.

In this post-modernist vision, Sir Ter- ence Conran (27) ranks above the Queen (30) and Kenneth Branagh (236) above William Hague (250); while Delia Smith (152) is next door to the permanent head of the Treasury (151). Most of the tradi- tional keepers of power, including perma- nent secretaries, police chiefs, academics and all generals, admirals and air mar- shals, including the Chief of Defence Staff are banished altogether.

It's sad news for anyone who liked look- ing behind the curtains of public power — which I enjoyed when I wrote successive Anatomies of Britain — to try to discover the grey people who pulled the real strings.

Have they really all gone, those Sir Humphreys who discreetly outployed their ministers; those master bankers who hired and fired company chairmen; those suits who settled the leadership, whether in smoke-filled rooms or smokeless zones?

Are the real king-makers now the PR men like Matthew Freud (256) or Max Clifford (275)? Is Mick Jagger (139) really more powerful than the Lord Chief Justice (166)? Or have the media become so obsessed with their own power that they have lost interest in anything beyond?

Of course you can argue, as the Observer does, that pop stars or cookery books have the power to change people's tastes in food or music, which also makes them famous and rich. But what has that got to do with exercising political power and how on earth can you compare the two?

The Observer's panel, chaired by Lord Hattersley, clearly believes that a Labour victory transforms the whole political scene, like a circular stage. But have those old guardians of power behind the stage, who have always featured in the history books, just vanished?

Contemporary history provides plenty of insights into the real movers and shakers, who are not necessarily elected politicians, let alone PR men. Britain's entry into

Europe was achieved not just by Ted Heath but by a clutch of convinced and industrious mandarins, as Hugo Young (297) shows in his new book on Britain and Europe, This Blessed Plot.

The Scott Inquiry into arms to Iraq showed how diplomat's played key roles in bamboozling Parliament. Tom Bower's biography of Al Fayed shows how Scotland Yard had its own private agenda for arresting the enemies of Harrods. The his- tory of Northern Ireland will eventually show how officials played central roles in preparing for the settlement.

As for lawyers, who barely feature in the 300, they are clearly not just richer, but more important than ever — all the way from Lord Falconer to Mishcon de Reya. Tony Blair may not yet have a master fixer to compete with Arnold Goodman in the Seventies or Walter Monckton in the Thir- ties; the Lord Chancellor (57) may be his chief mentor, but he is too visible to be a discreet operator. But Blair clearly desper- ately needs someone to deal with awkward cases like Bernie Ecclestone (226) or Ron Davies; and there are plenty of million-a- year barristers in the power world.

The fact is that many of the most seri- ously powerful are still, as they always have been, the opposite of famous. The only 'He's been outed' real test of power is getting things done, which is achieved by operating in the back- ground.

So perhaps it is reassuring that most of the really influential people do not feature among the 300. My own list would include several lawyers, mostly power brokers, but including Lord Hoffman, the cleverest and most conservative of the Law Lords, and Lord Browne-Wilkinson, the most liberal.

It would still include most of the perma- nent secretaries and the Chief of Defence Staff General Guthrie, however old-fash- ioned that sounds; together with a few MI6 agents, more important than diplomats.

It would feature several academics, not publicist-scientists like Richard Dawkins (141) or Stephen Hawking (68) but think- ers who affect public policy, like Ronald Dworkin, Amartya Sen or Lord Runciman.

It would feature the masters of the pen- sion billions led by Sir Martin Jacomb, the chairman of the Pru, and Sir James Spoon- er, the chairman of Hermes, together with his chief executive Alastair Ross Goobey — who have the power to control company bosses.

It would include businessmen who know how to spend their money as patrons, like Lord Hamlyn, Lord (John) Sainsbury or Lord (Jacob) Rothschild, Ian Hay Davison, the chairman of Sadler's Wells (which has gone up while Covent Garden went down) or Robert Gavron (who is also chairman of the Guardian group which owns the Observer). It would also include many people of whom few have heard, who would be hard to track down, but interesting to know. They would probably be the most influen- tial. 'You can change the world,' said Jean Monnet, who invented the European Corn' munity, 'provided you don't want to take credit for it.'

So is it all for the best, to maintain this public facade, that politics and business are just like showbiz, and let the real operators work undisturbed behind the scenes? Should we continue to hear more and more about the editor of the Sun (73) or the Mir- ror (134) and less and less about the Chief of Defence Staff or the chairman of the Pru? Should the public just wait 30 years for the records to tell the real story? Not really. A healthy democracy depends on educating the electorate in the realities of power and policies, and in making power accountable and preventing its abuse. The Scott Report or Tom Bower's book show how serious those abuses can be if we let officials, police chiefs or corrupters contin- ue undisturbed. Instead we are shown a hall of mirrors, in which everyone is reflecting the same images: the BBC is busy interviewing the BBC, newspapers are writing about other newspapers, PR men are promoting PR It not only leaves out the men behind the_ mirrors, it excludes the real groundsvvells ot public opinion which, in the end, will smash through the glass.