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

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However, despite the fun I had reading it, I would be falling into my own ideological biases if I didn't mention the sloppiness of Kuper's reasoning. The author seems to believe in a kind of Great Man Theory of History, wherein chaps from the elite think Great Thoughts, and then put those thoughts into actions, shaping world history as if there were no concrete social relations that they inhabited. Whether you agreed with the Brexit referendum or not, the fact that a populace had to be persuaded to either side cannot be ignored, but Kuper seems to think that isn't the case. 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. He believes that those men returned from war with some sense of responsibility for the other classes who fought alongside them. In Chums, he calls Johnson, Rees Mogg, Cameron et al as a “generation without tragedy”. “These were people who’d experienced nothing. They’ve experienced journalism.” This is an edited extract from Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK by Simon Kuper, published by Profile on 28 April.

Power, Privilege, Parties: the shaping of modern Britain

Clearly, a lot of work for “de-radicalising” certain institutions of education from such ideological manifestations (I’m trying to be polite!) of societal inequality and destruction.

A very interesting, short summing up of the origins of and the road to Brexit as well as a sad one, when all is said and done, as the sunny uplands for the masses seem nowhere in sight, it's there for our chums, the rest don't matter. T’was ever thus, of course – young toffs knowing they’ll inherit the earth and being rude, mean or downright cruel to the servants (including civil ones). The 19th Century radical William Cobbett called it The Old Corruption, the Victorians talked of ‘the upper ten thousand’, while in the 1950s it became The Establishment. You might have hoped, though, that by the 21st Century, with its social movements against all forms of inequality, such rampant disparity might have been ‘levelled up’ by now. Some chance. Discover the captivating origins and hidden meanings of the flags that we all know today in this sparkling tour through this universal subject! A searing onslaught on the smirking Oxford insinuation that politics is all just a game. It isn't. It matters' Matthew Parris While there may be some truth in the argument being made about every problem in the UK being down to most politicians being educated in Oxford (and we don't get as far as 2022 so naturally the UK is the only country that has problems), it's also tortuously hyperbolic at times:

chums: Brexit’s beginnings as a posh Oxford Boris and his chums: Brexit’s beginnings as a posh Oxford

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”. And it's not as if politicians should ever be called to account for their lies ... anyway.. who was lying? It's just that facts are boring. Johnson, Cameron, Rees-Mogg, Gove and Cummings all feature in this look at the hidden depths of our current political establishment and its inextricable link to Eton and, in particular, Oxford University'

He went up to Oxford in 1983 as a vessel of focused ambition. Ironic about everything else, he was serious about himself. Within his peer group of public schoolboys, he felt like a poor man in a hurry. He started university with three aims, writes Sonia Purnell in Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition: to get a first-class degree, to find a wife (his parents met at Oxford), and to become union president. At university he was always “thinking two decades ahead”, says his Oxford friend Lloyd Evans. Simon Kuper (6 March 2006). "All the time in the world". ESPNcricinfo . Retrieved 13 September 2011. A] highly entertaining, and often infuriating examination of the clique of Oxford Tories that gave us Brexit' Deng, Yii-Jeng (21 May 2022). "Book Review: Chums by Simon Kuper". The Oxford Student (Oxford's University's Student Newspaper). 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.