Are All Britain’s Current Woes Traceable to a Group of Entitled ‘Tory Toffs’ at Oxford in the 1980s?
I’ve reviewed Simon Kuper’s book Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the U.K. for the House Magazine. I say it’s an entertaining, highly readable book that contains some great anecdotes, but it’s core thesis – that the Brexit project was shaped by the class interest of a group of grievance-mongering Tory toffs who resented the transfer of power from Westminster to Brussels because they regarded the exercise of that power as their birthright – is laughably chippy. Here are the first few paragraphs:
It has become a commonplace of Islington dinner parties that the reason Britain is in such a mess is because of its wretched class system which has condemned us to being ruled by a bunch of incompetent Tory toffs. Not only are they lazy and amoral, believing the rules don’t apply to them, but for the most part they’re innumerate and scientifically illiterate, thanks to the humanities bias at Britain’s elite public schools and Oxford University. Little wonder, then, that they’ve made such a hash of governing the country, culminating in the disastrous decision to leave the European Union.
This furious critique of our current political masters has been given its clearest expression yet by the Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper. In Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, he traces Brexit back to a group of straight, white, ex-public schoolboys at Oxford in the 1980s and blames it on their elite backgrounds, their gargantuan sense of entitlement and the cult of the gentleman amateur.
“Ruling Britain was the prerogative of their caste,” he writes. “They didn’t want outsiders in Brussels muscling in.”
The dramatis personae of this story will be familiar to anyone interested in contemporary British politics and it is genuinely remarkable how many students who attended Oxford between 1983 and 1993 – that was the critical 10-year period, according to Kuper – now dominate public life. They not only include the architects of the Vote Leave campaign – Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Dominic Cummings, Daniel Hannan and Jacob Rees-Mogg – but also some of the main protagonists on the other side – David Cameron, George Osborne, Jeremy Hunt, Hugo Dixon, Rory Stewart, Nick Boles and Roland Rudd. Also at Oxford at the same time were many prominent Labour politicians, including Keir Starmer, David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper.
Just listing all those people points to a difficulty for Kuper. If being part of a privileged clique at Oxford from 1983-93 was instrumental in shaping the views of the politicians who masterminded our exit from the European Union, why did so many members of this club end up campaigning for Remain? And it seems a bit simplistic to reduce the Tory values of Johnson, Hannan and Rees-Mogg to a desire to perpetuate their class privilege when some of the most prominent Conservatives of this Oxford generation, such as Gove, came from modest backgrounds. Indeed, Boris wasn’t exactly to the manor born himself, being a scholarship boy at Eton. As Cummings once remarked on Twitter about this class-based analysis of the Brexit project: “If u think me Gove & Boris are posh you have literally no idea what posh is.”
Worth reading in full (no paywall).
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If it’s chippy, put salt and vinegar on it, then eat it and wash it down with a bottle of Irn Bru.
Simples.
Salt, vinegar and gravy with Yorkshire Tea.
The Great Western by Wolverhampton Railway Station does great chips and gravy along with some fantastic Black Country beers. I was there today, great day out.😋👍
Yorkshire Tea doesn’t go with deep fried Mars Bars.
Yorkshire Tea went woke a couple of years back. I wrote complaining.
Their reply basically amounted to F O.
Hopefully Yorkshire Tea will go broke.
The main flaw in the ‘Old Etonian toffs have ruined the UK’ theory, is that the country is not run by the Old Etonian toffs who end up in politics. Its run by a self selecting and self perpetuating class of almost entirely Left wing people people who control the entire State apparatus, and are never subject to any democratic control whatsoever. Whichever colour rosette is on the political pig, the country is run by the Permanent State, who pretty much does what it likes, and is the reason we are where we are today. We can vote to get rid of Boris et al, we can’t vote to get rid of the likes of Chris Whitty.
Chris Whitty is an old Oxford boy too.
Sure, but he as a nerd ugly he was probably bullied and had no friends except other weirdos.
Are you implying the guy has friends now?
He can’t even snag a wife FFS. Even Fred West managed that.
Had no friends? Why the use of past tense?
Delingpole says he can’t remember Whitty being bullied at Malvern College – because he can’t really remember him at all.
I suppose no-one could be bothered to bully him.
The Tories are progressive globalists, just as are Labour.
This is why the Tories do fu[k all to address any of the problems that this nation faces, it does not address them because it does not want to address them, it has bugger all to do with civil servants.
The Tories have been pushing the eco bullshit hard since Cameron got into power, they have allowed relentless mass immigration to continue, they tried hard to scupper Brexit (the version we got was as wet as they dared), all the covid debacle.
They did all of this because they wanted to, civli servants didn’t make them.
You are aware that Boris has practically declared war on the Civil Service?
I thought he declared war on Russia – was it the Civil Service as well?
If he did declare war on Russia it made a hell of a difference, didn’t it?
Gee, all those top paid jobs in the civil service going. Who will be left to indoctrinate the pen pushers with lefty propaganda?
Despite popular impression, the Civil Service has been shrinking in the long term since WW2. Under austerity it reached its lowest point, but rebounded because of Brexit and Covid.
Everyone wants an efficient service, but an arbitrary target is bound to lead to problems. Have a read of ‘The Secret Barrister’ if you want to see what central-driven cuts can do to a service.
Cut too far, and you can actually end up spending more through cock-ups and ineffectiveness.
I believe there are more civil servants in the MOD today than at the height of WWII
Cutting our ability to defend ourselves is a busy and demanding job. Shame there’s a war coming, ain’t it?
“Practically”? That’s the point, isn’t it: he does nothing but talk and bluster.
Agree. And that was pushed even further left into marxism under Blair who changed many of our Common Laws
“a bunch of incompetent Tory toffs. Not only are they lazy and amoral, believing the rules don’t apply to them, but for the most part they’re innumerate and scientifically illiterate, thanks to the humanities bias at Britain’s elite public schools and Oxford University. “
That’s all correct.
Looks like it might be the only bit of the book that’s correct, though. The rest looks like it’s probably just boilerplate leftist remainer nonsense.
And much good it did us all when the toffs consulted “scientists” about the pandemic. They turned out to be scientifically and mathematically illiterate too.
And intellectually idle – certainly in de Pfeffel’s case
Socially degenerate above all else.
Spot on.
The Scientists gave the advice they were told to give!
I don’t agree: the ‘scientists’ told the politics exactly what to do backed by our masters – the media.
Boilerplate nonsense, probably, yes.
There are several books on the English “public school elite” that are sold to a readership who like to nod while their mostly superficial ideas get confirmed.
The elite private schools constitute an extremely important institution in the English ruling class and its reproduction through the generations – far more important even than many critics are aware of. Unfortunately the boot has never been stuck into them properly. That’s why they’re still here.
If a light were properly to be shone on them, they’d go the way of the Magdalene Laundries.
Laughably, while the left derides Public Schools, so named because anyone can attend them, irrespective of social status, wealth (yes, even Boris was helped financially), religion, culture or country of origin.
Meanwhile, the left absolutely despises Grammar Schools, so designed as to give the brightest pupils a leg up, irrespective of their background. They are based solely on academic ability.
By its own admission by attempting to ban all of them, the left condemns the working class as unworthy of an excellent education.
They were called public because their business model was to attract paying pupils from anywhere, not just serve a local community or group.
To say that you can go ‘irrespective of wealth’ is the worst kind of politician’s bullshit. Today they are phenomenally expensive, to the point that even the UK middle classes are being squeezed out, as they serve the super wealthy of the world.
The Chinese will surely ‘sort them out’ when they buy them all?
The answer to the question is obviously no.
For starters, Imperial College has been responsible for most of Britain’s woes over the last two years.
And a small subsection of Imperial College at that.
Probably yes. They don’t have to live with their consequences, that’s only for the little people. I understand that the toffs back in the 50’s and 60’s believed that mass immigration was good and that the country would be homogenous in that the immigrant population would be spread evenly over the country.
After all Gupter at Eton was a good egg and played a straight bat, so why wouldn’t his fellow countrymen and women be jolly nice people.
The toffs live on their estates well away from the riff raff and the damage they have caused.
Your third paragraph is correct.
As for your first two, you’re way off the mark with “believed mass immigration was good” and how you think race worked at Eton.
I’d recommend a reading of Dillibe Onyeama’s (once famous) 1972 book.
Leaving the EU (as far as we have, which isn’t particular far) is certainly not disastrous – staying in would’ve been.
The use of that Remainer trope would suggest the rest of the book is nonsense, especially as the policies of the current ‘Conservative’ Party appear to be identical to those espoused by the other legacy parties.
“its wretched class system”: I’ve lived in these isles for decades and have yet to see this renowned class system. It’s true I’ve seen a class consciousness that I dislike – more in England than in Scotland – but no more.
Anyone who believes that there is no class consciousness in, say, the USA is living in cloud cuckoo land. True it interacts with race and income there but not enough to disguise its existence.
P.S. The photo – I see “Call me Dave” and Boris. Who are the other bozos?
Names are here:
https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/the-bullingdon-club/
Ta. So two PMs and seven I’ve never heard of.
A missing club member is Rupert Soames current CEO of Serco who received a multi million pound contract from Johnson’ government to put up the dingy arrivals on the Kent beaches into 4 star hotels across northern England now costing £6 million a day to the British tax payer.
Another member with Johnson was Darius Guppy jailed for a fake jewel robbery. And the BBC’s David Dimbleby was also a member of this now notorious club.
I don’t think the premis is correct tbh, it can’t be limited to a small clique from the 1980’s, it goes wider than that, intelligence services, Cambridge Analytica – ignore the “enquiry” it was a cover-up. https://neilsandersmindcontrol.com/index.php/blog/cambridge-analytica then there’s this: https://thegrayzone.com/2022/05/15/operation-leaked-emails-intelligence-coup-boris-johnson/ Leaked emails reviewed by The Grayzone reveal possibly criminal plot by pro-Leave elites to sabotage Theresa May’s Brexit deal, infiltrate government, spy on campaign groups, and replace May with Boris Johnson. Intelligence cabal infiltrated UK civil service thanks to “centrally placed mole” Ex-MI6 chief Richard Dearlove pitched espionage operations targeting civil service and campaign groups Fake Democratic Party fronts run by CIA veterans were proposed to infiltrate pro-Remain groups Cabal sought to spy on and disrupt Prime Minister’s top Brexit negotiator Shadowy billionaires funded effort in total secret Dearlove claimed credit for influencing government policy on Huawei Cabal now seeking to remove Boris Johnson These efforts could amount to charges of TREASON I’m sure many of them were involved in behind the scenes shinanigans, but that’s not limited to a bunch of young rich louts at Oxford, it’s because their families are part of the elite establishment, guarenteeing them a part to play in the great charade we call… Read more »
Or run by those who look at these entitled Tory Toffs, and think they could use these useful idiots
A complete sideshow distraction.
These people don’t run anything.
They are regional managers at best.
In 2020 someone somewhere decided that everyone in the world was going to lockdown, was going to get a jab and be issued with a vax passport of some sort. And I can assure you that wasn’t decided by Boris Johnson or anyone who went to Oxford or Eton with him.
More likely to be Bill Gates than Johnson.
Trotsky projection anyone?
@Toby – “Scholarship boy at Eton” doesn’t mean what you think it means. Boris Johnson got a King’s Scholarship. It probably came with some money off the fees in those days, but that wouldn’t have been of much importance to his family. The key thing is that King’s Scholars are segregated off into their own “house”, called “College”. They aren’t the paupers. They are the academic elite of Eton. They are the ones who wear the gowns. The non-Scholars don’t wear gowns. The same happens at Winchester. In both schools, that kind of scholarship is given to the top performers in special exams set only for that purpose. Believe it or not, Johnson must have shown some academic merit. He was NOT a “scholarship boy” in the stereotypical sense of a boy whose family pay only heavily reduced fees, who can’t afford clothes anywhere near as expensive as the ones worn by other boys, who speaks with a working class or lower middle class accent, has a “non-U” culture, and who has never heard of a gymkhana, a paddock, a Purdey rifle, or many of the other things that the poshies were brought up with. He was posh and rich.… Read more »
What’s wrong with being rich?
No. This is unquestionably Blair’s (Gaitskellite/Butskellist) Britain.
Cameron/Clegg and Bunter (and May) have had the same lack of political spine as Blair.
The bovine anti democratic response to the spurious ‘pandemic’ summed up the lot of them. They would unquestionably all have responded in the same gormless totalitarian fashion; numpties one and all.
And so we muddle on with all the encumbrances of Blair/Brown ‘look busy’ legislation and an even higher debt/tax burden, massive and utterly incompetent public sector, tiny, underfunded defence forces at a time of the greatest peril.
Shocked, horrified, incandescent…….
Two big mistakes here:
Thinking is often a mistake, particularly in your case.
If you truly believe that politicians do not run the country, I give you the example of Hancock; covid policy before and after his demise
Often it is the brightest (which excludes Hancock, a mendacious fool) that are the most incompetent.
Aw shit, you blew it.
“underfunded defence forces”
I don’t agree: the defence budget has been large enough to cope with the real threats we face.
The problem has been appallingly bad decision making combined with a ghastly cocktail of incompetence, corruption, waste and rip-off defence firms, combined more recently with feminisation, trannification and an obsession with diversity..
2% (not really) has clearly not been sufficient.
We should have put an Army Corps in Poland in 2014. In fact we could never even have managed a fire brigade (Green Goddesses gone!) let alone a single armoured brigade; pathetic.
But your cocktail is a good one; spot on.
We are fortunate enough to be a relatively wealthy island nation in probably the safest part of the world. Since the end of the Soviet Union, we have faced (and still face) no meaningful military threats other than to a few colonial outposts around the world. We have a nuclear deterrent with secure second strike capability.
We have no honest need to spend more than we do on our military, as witnessed by the fact that our rulers have been able to ponce around the world interfering in other people’s quarrels, knowing they faced no military risk at home. Most of the security problems we have had resulted directly from mass migration – again, directly due to the evil or incompetence of our own elites.
I’d personally be inherently inclined to boost military spending on the general precautionary basis – walk softly and carry a big stick. But the evidence of recent years is that our rulers simply cannot be trusted with military force.
And we desperately need to concentrate on dealing with the problems of misrule we have at home, rather than letting ourselves be distracted by foreigners’ quarrels.
Being able to replace our almost 40 year old main battle tank with something up to date would be helpful. That does cost a few bob.
We are, however, building a 6th(?) generation fighter of our own (Typhoon?) which makes a change from having to collaborate with other nations.
Hopefully it’s good enough that we can flog a few to other countries and recoup the cost to the Taxpayer. Although, for our own defence I don’t really see that as an imperative.
We only had ‘Butskellism’ from 1945 to 1979. During that period, the two Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Harold Wilson both dealt competently with the flu pandemics of 1957-58 and 1968-69, despite being from opposite parties.
Thatcher disowned the ‘post-war consensus’ after she won her election victory. By 2020, global capital was well and truly in control of the UK.
“The post-war consensus was the economic order and social model of which the major political parties in post-war Britain shared a consensus supporting view, from the end of World War II in 1945 to the late-1970s. It was abandoned by Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher. Majorities in both parties agreed upon it. The consensus tolerated or encouraged nationalisation, strong trade unions, heavy regulation, high taxes, and a generous welfare state.” (Wikipedia, my emphasis)
And you condemn rejecting the post war consensus as a bad idea?
Just occasionally, you can be gloriously coherent.
There certainly needs to be a critique of a clique of men who believe themselves born to rule, especially in the light of recent and current events. But I think it’s missing the point. From here on in we will be ruled by the best systems managers, systems of slavery obviously. And being the best means a combination of right background, a willingness to engage in arse-licking, and general psychopathic behaviour. The higher you go the deeper the capture by psychopathy so the psychos feel more relaxed being themselves in the upper echelons.
Whose a*ses though?
And what kind of schools will the most successful functionaries send their sons to?
These famous Islington dinner parties and that boring “humanities” reference. Lol!
That’s what happens to people who are so unoriginal as to get all their “jokes” from Private Eye. (Do they go “er” for emphasis and make comments they end with “Ed”? All I can say is I’m glad I don’t attend Islington dinner parties.)
Classics is part of the “humanities”?
People can use the word that way if they like, but if they’re talking about how things are at the elite private schools – or for that matter at certain Oxford colleges, or on certain websites – they’re missing a lot.
Here’s Boris Johnson reciting from the Iliad in ancient Greek.
As one of your commutators has noted, the current disastrous state of the UK can be fairly laid at Blair’s door – just look at his record of treachery:
Human Rights laws that are a lawyers money-making charter (especially for one Cherie Blair)
Botched devolution for Scotland/Wales – didn’t that turn out well to scotch the rise of nationalism!
Botched House of Lords reform, including the disaster of creating an activist Supreme Court (yet more lucrative work for his legal cronies)
And the Biggie in most people’s eyes – opening the immigration floodgates
About the only thing we didn’t get from him was membership of the Euro, and that’s only thanks to Gordon Brown’s five (impossible) tests.
All roads to ruin lead to Blair
I’ve been repeating this for twenty years.
Wasn’t handing over sovereignty to a foreign power (EEC — EU) an act of treason in Common Law. They are about to do the same with the WHO.
And that is the red flag that nobody seems to see staring them in the face.
If PM was as determined as he says he was to restore the sovereignty of the UK back to the UK and wrestle it back from the EU why on earth would he give even a second’s thought to signing it away to that vast unaccountable body the WHO, never mind be one of the leading lights in the whole dastardly scheme?
Although not quite as destructive as Brexit.
I feel that we are to blame. We have sat back for decades decadently hoping that even though we are governed by one shitshow after another who all seem hellbent on moving things in a generally unpleasant direction, somehow we could just chill out and expect that things would turn out alright anyway. The idea that true democracy is getting up off your arse every four years to vote for one monstrosity or another. It’s like going to the gym, you have to use it or lose it. Where is the fire? I see generally a lazy uneasy fatalistic attitude prevailing in this country. You can’t do anything if there’s no spirit.
My gut said it wanted to post something. Over to you, gut. You can run the fingers for a bit.
Incompetence is Incompetence whether it’s from Eton or Bash Street schools.
However, Eton incompetence tends to have wider-reaching economic outcomes.
Absolutely.
Well said.
It looks like Boris was too lazy to pull up his socks even back then…
They are certainly an obnoxious arrogant bunch but so are the EU mafia too.
Imagine you lived in Athens 2500 years ago when shrinking from controversy was deemed to be a crime. You might suffer an anxiety attack. There is great wisdom in enshrining such an edict in terms of controlling the lower impulses of man.
Photoshop Blair as an inset and you have it.
In five years time the Bullingdon boys will seem like a Halcyon daydream. Your life is circumscribed within much narrower categories. Just understand it. If you are a man who likes a bit of fun and adventure then life will not be worth living for you at all, in fact it will be hell.
It’s like Orwell said. a lot of English people complain about the class system but very few would actually want to abolish it.
There is no air traffic control, there is no landing crew, there is barely an airport. You have to grasp this reality and build from it otherwise you are screwed.
The city of London cabal.
Honestly we are faced with a serious situation. Either we get together as Englishmen or we don’t. Because we don’t have the luxury of time.
When the 2021 census results are announced we’ll find out that there are far fewer Englishmen than there were 10 years before.
I know. So consciousness is important. We are the English, we aren’t necessarily the best but we deserve our own land.
“Ruling Britain was the prerogative of their caste,” he writes. “They didn’t want outsiders in Brussels muscling in.”
Doesn’t appear to be a wholly valid theory to me: these toffs seem to be more than willing to let the USA, NATO and the WHO dictate major policies for the UK.