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

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In this Venn Diagram of private education crossing Oxford post graduate degree we have the Oxford Tories whose power an influence only has seemed to grown in the last decade. Their policies and concerns such as Brexit and Austerity has shaped the UK as it stands in 2023 and if it is to be their legacy it is a damning one.

Of course any English person with their finely tuned class antenna would know this instinctively. President Obama, would not be expected to, but with acute insight, he wrote in his memoirs on first meeting David Cameron, that he seemed to be a man at infinite ease with himself and the world around him as if disaster would not touch him. Johnson’s gift turned out to be for winning office, not doing anything with it. He didn’t make much of his presidency, recalls Tim Hames, a union politician of the time: “The thing was a shambles. He couldn’t organise a term card to save his life. He didn’t have the sort of support mechanism that he realised in later life that he required.” The trouble is, this short book is exactly the sort of lazy, provocative essay that he criticises as being at the heart of Oxford thinking. No one else but an Oxford grad could have tried to write a serious book based on a handful or written sources, a docu-drama, some personal reflections, and chats with people he already knew. How can you tell a man attended Oxford?” Victor Lewis Smith once joked. “Because he’ll tell you in the first sentence.” For most of us, the subject is irrelevant, boring and self-absorbed. Oxford is barely worth a day trip; the centre of the city looks pretty in summer, but most of it’s a dump, and a cup of tea won’t get you much change out of a fiver. I taught history at the University of Sussex, in Brighton, and much preferred it. Oxford doesn’t have a pier.In truth,” writes Kuper, with an even-handedness surely acquired during his early schooling in the Netherlands, “almost everyone who gets into Oxford is a mixture of privilege and merit in varying proportions.” Though mostly privilege. At the start of the 21st century, private schools (which at the time educated about 7 per cent of the population) supplied around half of Oxford’s domestic student intake. Kuper quotes the former Labour minister Andrew Adonis: “The place felt like one huge public school to which a few others of us had been smuggled in by mistake.” Chumsis a snapshot of a time gone by, bringing alive 1980s Oxford in vivid detail. It acts as a warning about a future without social mobility, showing the disproportionate influence closed networks can play. Simon Kuper’s writing makes the book a gripping read from start to finish, taking you step-by-step from university days and the Oxford Union right to Coronavirusand the heart of government. The book’s thesis, that Oxford (and specifically the Oxford Union) played a formative role in the rise of politicians like Johnson and the idea of Brexit, is thought-provoking; however, I feel we need to consider the counterfactual to judge the extent to which this is true. Ultimately, if Oxford was cut out of the story, would Johnson still be PM? I think the answer is most probably. Jacob Rees-Mogg speaks at the Oxford Union Society in 1991. Listening are Kenneth Clarke and John Patten. Photograph: Edward Webb/Alamy It’s not long since I read Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England, an angry account of the damage inflicted by private boarding schools which skirts around similar territory. The tones of the two books are notably different: while Beard is viscerally angry, Kuper feels more inquisitive. He also comes up with some interesting suggestions on how to correct the problems he identifies. He started his FT career as a reporter. His assignments have often taken him beyond his base in Paris, providing coverage and analysis on global events from different parts of the world.

I have always thought that the way Oxford sets up undergraduate studies is wasteful - I recently attended a "Gaudy" (reunion) and most of my contemporaries agreed that very little that they learned academically was useful in later life. The tutorial system is very expensive and largely useless. Most 18 year olds have no idea what they want to do with life and they need a first year studying a wide range of subjects. Changing courses at Oxford is very hard. Norton-Taylor, Richard (20 March 2021). "The Happy Traitor by Simon Kuper review – the extraordinary story of George Blake". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 2 July 2023.Kuper, Simon (17 March 2022). "Becoming French is like winning the lottery". Financial Times . Retrieved 2 July 2023. 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.

You talk of Anthony and Cleopatra in a detached manner, Mr Jones,” said the languid interviewer. “Tell me, would you die for love?” Even during the 1980s when only 13% of people went to Higher Education, less than 0.5% of those graduated from an Oxbridge College, yet 13 of the 17 post war Prime Ministers graduated from Oxford University. Four of them educated at one very exclusive private school in Berkshire (you know the one) However, the causality between Brexit and Oxford is less thoroughly argued. Similar EU concerns persist in other countries too. Also, the second half of the book at times read like an FT opinion piece, rather than a detailed analysis.Football Against The Enemy: the story behind the story | Sporting Intelligence" . Retrieved 2 July 2023. P, Ullekh N. (1 December 2013). "2014 FIFA World Cup: Simon Kuper, football writer, lists teams to watch out for". The Economic Times. ISSN 0013-0389 . Retrieved 1 July 2023. I don’t know what I expected about a book called Chums, focused on the British political elite, their time at Oxbridge, and a look into how the establishment cemented - and continues to influence - the governmental structure we see today. Rhetorically engaging, fantastically written, and well researched. This book has all the hot gossip from Oxford in the 1980s, exploring how that generation of graduates was shaped, and how they are now shaping Britain. Cherwell Magazine serves as the diary for the Tories who now dominate British politics, and the Oxford debating club as a kind of lyceum for our current era. It is here we see the making of modern Britain in the post-Thatcher era.