Spot the difference

Pictures of Milliband, Clegg, Cameron, Osborne, nice well educated white chaps about 40, either been to public school or Oxbridge. All come from comfortable backgrounds

The ghost of Tony Blair haunts British politics.

Who is going to exorcise it?

Oxford and Cambridge have the highest entrance standards of any British universities; they attract those who already show ability at that age. The Miliband brothers both went to a comprehensive before Oxford. Harold Wilson went to Oxford too. For that matter, Clement Attlee went to a public school and Oxford.

Out of those who do attend these institutions what proportion come from public schools ?

Out of those who come from state schools and go to Oxbridge what proportion are from working class backgrounds or have any real experience of poverty ?

I suppose that Milliband does at least have his families experience of Nazi persecution to ground him.

None of them has the background that an Ernie Bevin or an Aneurin Bevan brought to office. In fact even high born Tories of the past such as Harold Macmillan had their experiences of war to ground them (Macmillan was wounded on the Somme).

What we have is a ministerial class governing a population about whose lives they only have academic knowledge. I am not sure that is a good thing considering the economic storm that is about to break over the world.

because now you're saying that it's their background that counts, not what university they went to. That's fine, and I agree there should be a wide mixture of backgrounds. But we don't need a wide mixture of ability; and I think it's wrong to say that you can have too many people in a cabinet who showed early ability.



Yes, too many Oxbridge students come from private schools; but that surely means that those that come from state schools are even more likely to have been high achievers, getting in without the support that private education gave the others?

And my sister-in-law went to Cambridge. (I went on a summer programme at Trinity several years ago)

I don't understand this criticism towards Oxbridge. (On the record I went to an American public (not private) school)

but only for a dance afew years back. :)

My favourite pub there was the Eagle and Child. I've got to visit again sometime now that I live here!

I was actually in the City for a dance class with Jonathon Bixby when I think about it - not a dance. I know that the traffic had already been blocked from the centre. These days I happily bypass Oxford.

I do think there is a lot of stereotyping of Oxbridge; most of the students I know - who may not be representative of the entire student body - come from state schools, and I could not imagine any of them turning into Cameron or even Clegg.

The last government conveniently blamed Oxbridge for 'elitist' discrimination against state school applicants, when the real problem was the introduction of tuition fees, making university, especially in cities with a high cost of living, unaffordable to most working-class and low-income people. There is also an exasperating media image which is 50 to 100 years out of date: I often wish that 'Brideshead Revisited' had never been written, or, if written, had never been filmed or televised.

There is a lot of anti-intellectualism in Britain, especially in England, which IMO fuels some of the resentment toward Oxbridge and some other universities.

Having said all this: it IS true that there has been, and doubtless still is, a certain small but influential proportion of students who use Oxbridge, not mainly as a place to work and study, or expand their horizons more generally, but as a 'finishing school' for getting into politics or the media. They tend to concentrate in certain subjects (e.g. few scientists, with the notable past exception of the lovely Maggie!) I resent them as I feel they are taking the places of students who could really benefit and end up contributing a lot more to society, and as they are using the resources given to them to learn how to become professional bullshitters! I remember being told my a fellow student in the Thatcherite 80s that the way to write a successful essay is to write cleverly on things that you know little about. It certainly wouldn't have worked in my subject, but maybe it did in hers. She now has a fairly successful media-related career.

I have nothing against Oxbridge students, or those from anywhere else, going into political careers - all the best to them if they have the right motives! I have something against those people who at 18 have already decided that they want to go into politics or certain forms of journalism, not as a way of trying to improve the world but simply as a glittering career, and who use the resources made available to them as means of becoming clever bullshitters and careerist hacks.

it's just a matter of educational or original social background of individual politicians. And it's an issue that's been going on since long before Blair.

By the time someone is a serious politician, they are upper middle class by virtue of being politicians, whatever their original background.

Thatcher and Major both came from non-affluent backgrounds; Tebbit and David Davis and the almost-equally right-wing Blunkett from poor backgrounds. None of them had much empathy for poor people. On the other hand, Tony Benn came from the aristocracy and was far more devoted to the cause of poor/working-class/vulnerable people.

I think that it's true that the power base of working-class/ poor people in the Labour Party, inasmuch as it existed, has been eroded. Partly due to the crushing of the trade unions under Thatcher. And there never was much representations from organizations representing unemployed, disabled or elderly people. I think that a re-empowering of the trade unions AND more political empowering of organizations representing disadvantaged or vulnerable people are what is needed; more than a focus on the background of individual politicians. Though I do think that all politicians should be required to spend, say, two weeks living on minimum wage or on benefits (and without access to their other sources of income) before they take office - and that this should be repeated for every term of office!.

It is life experiences.

Read their Wikipedia biographies and you will find these are young men who have known precious little else than politics.

None of them has the war experiences of a Heath, Healey or Macmillan. Nor have they ground their way from the bottom like many post war Labour politicians such as Ernie Bevin who worked as a labourer and read the papers aloud to those members of his family who were illiterate.

These are people who are going to be making crucial decisions about how the rest of us live.

I think it's better if a politician has had some experience of the 'real world' before starting to climb the greasy pole. Cameron's pre-political career, insofar as he had one, was as a PR man. It shows.

Well worth a read, if only for how ahead of the game the book was on issues like MP's expenses.

It's funny how people forget how Brown wasn't an elite pretty boy. He wasn't elected PM either but that's beside the point.

...upper class twit with no experience of life outside politics? That's essentially what we have at the moment.

What the UK has had recently are a bunch of party leaders who manage to rise to prominance without paying dues or leading the party for more than 4 years in opposition before becoming PM. But that's democracy if the people didn't want it they would've kept Brown or Major before him.

So it's not 100% honest to claim that's what people want if they are not being given the chance to choose it in the first place. It's very notable that both the Tory and Labour candidates in my constituency were blatant careerists for instance.

I think that the lack of experience of politicans is becoming a big problem. All too often politicians are making judgements based on what some think tank says about things like poverty, armed combat, running a business, illness, and state education without any personal expeience of these things. That is not a recipe for good decisions.

aren't stuck on using wedge issues as a political tool like US pols. Short sightedness is common in all political systems but the so called culture wars are preventing the US from moving forward.

For starters, ever heard of the immigration issue? Some people blather on about little else but immigration.

It often seems to be forgotten that PMs are not directly elected like presidents but are leaders of the *party* that gets elected. Until very recently, elections were seen predominantly in terms of a *party* winning, though the leader's policies and perceived competence or lack of it were among the things taken into account. In 1945, a party led by a national hero perceived as 'saving the country' was overwhelmingly rejected for a party seen as best able to fulfil the country's needs at the time. Nowadays, perhaps because of the role of television; perhaps because of increasing 'Americanization' of the political discourse; perhaps just because of individual leaders' attitudes, it is seen increasingly as a referendum on the leader.

There have been plenty of other PMs who became leader mid-term: for example, Macmillan; Home; Callaghan. The two latter were never the leaders in an election which their parties won - yet I don't think it was made into the same sort of issue.