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

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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. 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.

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

He recalls: “Boris Mark 1 was a very conventional Tory, clearly on the right, and had what I would term an Old Etonian entitlement view: ‘I should get the top job because I’m standing for the top job.’ He didn’t have a good sense of what he was going to do with it.” a b "BSME Awards 2016 – the winners". www.inpublishing.co.uk. 16 November 2016 . Retrieved 2 July 2023. Lipman, Maria (20 April 2021). "The Happy Traitor: Spies, Lies, and Exile in Russia; The Extraordinary Story of George Blake". Foreign Affairs. No.May/June 2021. ISSN 0015-7120 . Retrieved 2 July 2023.

His book The Football Men, which was published in 2011, offered a collection of articles about the world of football over a span of 13 years, along with new pieces written specifically for this book. The Independent wrote that "Simon Kuper is a refreshing antidote to the current media obsession with 'getting the nannies [nanny goats = quotes]', however banal, from players. He doesn't mince his words: talking of past greats, he dismisses Bobby Charlton as "a dullard", Michel Platini "a weak character" and Pele "a talking puppet." [28]

An Outsider Takes an Inside Look at the Oxford ‘Chums’ Who

In Chums, Simon Kuper reminds us that a lot of Brexiteers – Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove – entered Elysium at a golden moment, the mid-1980s; the pinnacle of Thatcherism, the age of Brideshead on TV. Being silly was serious business. They carried their Arcadian personalities and politics into the rest of their lives – and Kuper, a fellow alumnus, loathes them for it. Thirteen of the seventeen postwar British prime ministers went to Oxford University. In Chums, Simon Kuper traces how the rarefied and privileged atmosphere of this narrowest of talent pools - and the friendships and worldviews it created - shaped modern Britain. On the one hand Kuper makes a compelling case for the complete and lasting overthrow of Britain’s chumocracy. For gods sake let’s end the days of our country being run by a group of Oxford educated public school boys. It’s not good for fairness , it’s not good for the millions of excluded young people who could perhaps offer an interesting vibrant future , and looking at the past 20 years it’s not much good for the country. Some sobering statistics in his quietly devastating critique of the shallow pool the Westminster establishment fishes from to recruit for its political elite. In addition, I do feel academia is taken far more seriously than Kuper’s descriptions of the 1980s – tutors are constantly pushing me to delve further into the topics at hand and to achieve the next grade. Oxford is not just seen as three or four years of fun, but particularly for working-class students like me as a beacon of social mobility and a way to progress onto the next stage of their lives. Maybe national and international league tables alongside an increasing focus on research funding can be held partly responsible for that, alongside a more competitive jobs market.Zoekresultaten voor simon kuper | Zoeken | Het Financieele Dagblad". fd.nl . Retrieved 10 July 2023. Drawing on his forthcoming book, Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, Kuper will discuss the dynamics and effects of Britain’s ruling class and its ‘chumocracy’, with responses from Mike Savage – a sociologist of elites – and Jane Gingrich, Professor of Comparative Political Economy. In his new book, Simon details how Oxford University has produced most of the most powerful Conservative politicians of our time. They aren't just colleagues - they are peers, rivals, friends. And, when they walked out of the world of student debates onto the national stage, they brought their university politics with them. How has this reality helped define and design modern Britain? Nearly all campaigning for votes was supposedly banned under the union’s own rule 33. There were occasional attempts to enforce the rule, through tribunals featuring London lawyers, but candidates almost always flouted it. The conversation about Chumswill, no doubt, rumble on for years to come, and that conversation – if directed correctly – has so much value. The future doesn’t have to look like Chumsand I don’t anticipate it will, but we all need to play our part to make sure that is truly the case.

Chums by Simon Kuper — the Oxford breed of political bluff

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 the UK, we’re in a much better position because you have the BBC, which everyone likes to compain about all the time. However, most people get their needs met, and broadly accept it. An example is ‘Partygate’, where even Tories agree that ‘Partygate’ happened. Some of them said it wasn’t really a big deal but there was almost no debate about it being true. It’s very hard, because whatever you do, can be misrepresented but I think, certainly having more local reporters, which the BBC is now working on as well in places like Norwich or Halifax. SK: Both, I think. I’m told that in the foreign office for example, your application is University-blind, so they don’t know when you apply which University you went to. And you are not supposed to reveal it. In contrast, the Financial Times graduate trainee schemes used to recruit only people like me who went to Oxford. And now I think they try not to do that. So you can see that the British elite institutions make those reforms. But it’s difficult when you have these two Universities who obviously have a higher status. In the Private Sector you see that people will take graduates from Oxford over Reading. MH: So while your book focuses on Politicians and the influence of student politics at Oxford, do you not think there’s also just as interesting a story to write about, for instance, journalists or any other profession where there is a strong reliance on Oxbridge graduates?

Speakers

In 2003 he published his book Ajax, The Dutch, the War: Football in Europe during the Second World War. He co-authored the 2009 book Soccernomics with Stefan Szymanski. The authors subsequently put forward a formula allowing Kuper to predict that Serbia and Brazil would play the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final. [27] If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Secrecy came naturally to John le Carré, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep, nowhere more so than in his private life. Seemingly content in his marriage, the novelist conducted a string of love affairs over four decades. To keep these relationships secret, he made use of tradecraft that he had learned as a spy: code names and cover stories, cut outs, safe houses and dead letter boxes. 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 ]

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

Many of the Oxford politicians he discusses were also Etonians and they felt an entitlement to power. “There have been five Eton and Oxford prime ministers since the war. Eton tells you, ‘This is the route to power. It’s going to the [Oxford] Union. It’s speaking well… Everyone in the British establishment 100 or 200 years ago looks like you. This is going to be you.’ Only one person I was at school with came up to Oxford the same year as me... Whereas, if you’re Boris Johnson, you arrive and there are 100 people from your year who are there. And then their sisters and their cousins and people they know from the boarding school caste are there. So they feel, ‘Everything here is familiar and Eton has told me what to expect.’ I didn’t really know what to expect. I’m not at all claiming I was disadvantaged, but coming from Eton is different… It gives you a roadmap.”SK: I certainly think they should do that. I was asked to give a talk at Eton recently and I was interested to go just to see it as a social phenomenon, I’ve never been inside Eton before. In the end, I said no because they wouldn’t even pay my train fare from London and a taxi. In early 1983, as a diffident grammar school boy, I sat in a centuries old sitting room, beside a burbling open fire, enduring an interview for a place to study English at Oriel College, Oxford. I was muttering something about Shakespeare.