Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK

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He has lived in Jamaica, Sweden, Palo Alto, California, Berlin and London. He studied History and German at Oxford University, and attended Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar. [9] Career [ edit ] Kuper has written several books, starting with the William Hill awarded Football Against the Enemy (1994), which was later released in the United States as Soccer Against the Enemy. [25] The Times wrote of the book: "If you like football, read it. If you don't like football, read it." [26] Neil Lee ( @ndrlee) is Professor of Economic Geography at the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE and leads the Cities, Jobs and Economic Change Research Theme at the International Inequalities Institute.

The born-to-rule Oxford Tories - New Statesman

Brexit has been billed as an anti-elitist revolt. More precisely it was an anti-elitist revolt led by an elite: a coup by one set of Oxford public schoolboys” (Boris, Cummings) “against another” (David Cameron) and the election was fought, by Johnson at least, “as if it were a Union debate”. It was a game for these people, just like communism was sport for Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt in the 1930s, though Kuper admits that this parallel “isn’t entirely fair: though both betrayed Britain’s interests in the service of Moscow, the Brexiteers did it by mistake”. In 2022 he published Chums - How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, [32] [33] [34] about the connections that enabled a university network to dominate Westminster. [35] Personal life [ edit ] Jane Gingrich ( @jrgingrich)is Professor in Comparative Political Economy at the University of Oxford. Her main research interests involve comparative political economy and comparative social policy. In particular, she is interested in contemporary restructuring of the welfare state, and the politics of institutional change. She is currently the PI of the ERC-Project "SchoolPol", which studies variation and effects of educational regimes across countries. In this event, Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper traces how the rarefied and privileged atmosphere of Britain’s oldest university - and the friendships and worldviews it created – has shaped the nation and helped make Brexit. The sway Oxford has had and continues to have over the UK and beyond is grim as it is depressing. I think one of Kuper’s main advantages is that he is both an insider and outsider, an insider as he studied there for four years, and an outsider because he isn’t English and is a foreigner. So he gets both fresh perspective and first-hand experience, which brings an element of balance.

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This reminds us that there is little which is healthy or natural about boarding school either. It is a cold, pathogenic system which has little room for love, compassion or sensitivity. When you compare the pupils from such a system with those from grammar or state school, you see that normal education would see pupils maybe spend up to eight hours a day with peers, whereas public school boys are around each other closer to 24/7. So in essence over a period of many years most pupils are shaped chiefly by family, but those who went to such boarding houses, are defined by private school and all that it stands for. The description of the system is good, but the analysis is a bit thin. Admittedly, Eton and Oxford do have a grip on the ruling class in the UK, but it would be far more interesting to understand why that might be? After all, the UK has more than one ancient and famous university, there is more than one ancient school. What is the grip of these institutions that helps them to maintain their place. It could be money and endowments, but these exist elsewhere. We are never quite given an insight into why that might be. Inbred self-confidence is, of course, what the likes of Johnson, Rees-Mogg (“the only undergraduate who went around in a double-breasted suit”), Rishi Sunak (Winchester) and David Cameron (whose “accent, confidence, height and pink rude health always screamed Eton”) have in spades. As do less recognisable but very influential players, like ardent Brexiteer Daniel (now Baron) Hannan, co-founder of the Vote Leave campaign. They’re gifted it by fairy godmothers, then have it nurtured at Eton/ Winchester/Charterhouse/Shrewsbury/wherever and honed at Oxford. But I don’t think that makes the difference, and the difference is being made by Oxford or Cambridge admissions, to change radically. The parents of kids whose children have gone through the private school system must be thinking they worsened their child’s chances of getting into Oxford, because Oxbridge now has these complex algorithms and targets for state school entries. Although Oxbridge is obviously still not fully reflective of UK demographics, it has improved a lot in the last five years, much more than I ever expected, since 2017. And now, it’s about just over 30% private school. This is way higher than the portion of the population that goes to private school, not much higher however than the population of sixth formers at private schools. It’s the lowest in Oxford and Cambridge history. 10 years ago if you were paying for Eton or St Pauls, you were paying for Eton plus Oxford, where that is no longer the case. Union politicians – instantly recognisable because they were the only students who wore suits – were forever traipsing around the colleges tapping up ordinary students with the phrase, “May I count on your vote?” Typically, though, only a few hundred people, many of them union insiders, bothered to cast theirs.

Chums: Simon Kuper’s hit 80s Oxford book gets picked up by TV Chums: Simon Kuper’s hit 80s Oxford book gets picked up by TV

When I arrived at Oxford in 1988 to study history and German, it was still a very British and quite amateurish university, shot through with sexual harassment, dilettantism and sherry. Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and the much less prominent David Cameron had graduated just before I arrived, but from my messy desk at the student newspaper Cherwell, I covered a new generation of future politicians. You couldn’t miss Jacob Rees-Mogg, the only undergraduate who went around in a double-breasted suit, or Dan Hannan who, at the age of 19, founded a popular Eurosceptic movement called the Oxford Campaign for an Independent Britain, which, with hindsight, looks like the intellectual genesis of Brexit. Cherwell was a poor imitation of Private Eye – inaccurate, gnomic and badly written in the trademark Oxford tone of relentless irony, with jokes incomprehensible to outsiders, but it turns out that we weren’t just lampooning inconsequential teenage blowhards. Though we didn’t realise it, we were witnessing British power in the making.

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You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. I’ve never given much thought to Oxbridge and honestly I’m glad I didn’t. For one thing, the book highlights just how fundamental the establishments appear to have been in how Brexit played out, but additionally, the internal corruption the networks have enabled, and the unfair playing ground the rest of us are at least five steps behind on. Isn’t it funny how so many of those obsessed with power and wealth, and who will do or say almost anything to keep it, inevitably wash down into the dark sewer of politics. Politics like sales, law, finance et al, has always been a perennial haven for all sorts of undesirables. It over rewards some of the darkest and damaging traits of human behaviour, such as lying, stealing, cheating, bullying and greed and yet whilst engaging in these habits you actually get held in tremendously high-esteem and become almost immune to the laws of the land.