During the Second World War, Edward Heath was mentioned in dispatches and awarded an MBE for active service in the Normandy landings. “He said later that seeing Europe destroy itself again left him ‘with the deep belief that remains with me to this day: that the peoples of Europe must never again be allowed to fight each other’. In 1973, he took the UK into the EEC.” It helped this new breed, Kuper argues, that at the union, they were often joking among themselves. The Oxford University Labour Club, high on Billy Bragg and miners’ solidarity marches, boycotted the debating chamber (one result, Kuper suggests, was that they “never learned to speak”). The political big beasts on the left in the second half of the 80s, in university terms, were the Miliband brothers, Dave and Ted, and Eddie Balls and Yvette Cooper, organising rent protests at their respective colleges. The young Keir Starmer, who did his undergraduate degree at Leeds, arrived in 1985 and made a stand about supporting the print workers at Wapping. Johnson could raise predictable guffaws in union debates when characterising socialist students as “retreating into their miserable dungareed caucuses”. 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. Gove grew into a recognisable Oxford character in outsized glasses, speaking with an exaggerated oratorical air even in daily life. When the future Guardian journalist Luke Harding arrived at Oxford in 1987, Gove led his freshers’ tour of the union. “He was basically the same [as in 2021],” recalls Harding. “He had this preternatural self-confidence, this faux-courtly manner. He seemed somewhat parodic, someone who wasn’t going to flourish in the real world.” Yet he has gone on to become the Jeeves to Johnson’s Wooster.

Why 1980s Oxford holds the key to Britain’s ruling class

I have skin in this game having been a graduate of one of these illustrious places in 1981 . I was also rather amazed at the schools based hiera 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] 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. Kuper has twice been awarded the British Society of Magazine Editors' prize for Columnist of the Year, in 2016 [3] and 2020. [4] Books [ edit ]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. He says now: “My mother was so embarrassed because it made the New York Times. She said, ‘How dare you ask people those questions?’” But in fact, the sex was just a cover, says Luntz: “I knew it would be so controversial that no one would think, ‘Actually this was a poll done for a political campaign’.” He slipped in two questions about the union that were intended to identify which candidate Johnson should strike a deal with about trading second-preference votes. Also in 2021, Kuper released The Happy Traitor, [30] an account of the life and motivations of George Blake, a British spy for the Soviet Union. The narrative, praised for its detailed exploration and understanding of Blake's complex character, sheds light on Blake's ideological shifts and personal struggles with identity and marks a significant addition to Kuper's body of work. [31] Kuper is considered one of the most influential voices at the Financial Times. [17] Since joining the publication in 1994, he has held various roles, writing on a wide range of topics, from sports and popular culture to politics. [18] [19]

Chums: Updated with a new chapter - Simon Kuper - Google Books Chums: Updated with a new chapter - Simon Kuper - Google Books

He publishes a well-read column in the weekend edition FT Magazine [2] and has twice been awarded the British Society of Magazine Editors' prize for Columnist of the Year. [3] [4] Kuper has also written for outlets such as The Guardian and The Times. [5] David Cameron, on the other hand, studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) – which still didn’t alert this keen Remainer to the fact that calling a Referendum on the EU was his fatal mistake. Other universities, of course, could argue that they are also centres of excellence, in both different subjects and similar ones. “Alternatively,” Kuper concludes, “we could preserve Oxford unchanged, and just accept elite self-perpetuation as the intended outcome of British life.”What does he think will happen to the class of public school educated folk that currently dominate the Tory party? “I think it’s possible that the Johnson, Cameron, Rees-Mogg generation will prove to be a last hurrah. But I think that class is very tenacious. Eton exists to educate the ruling class and if the ruling class has to do Stem degrees or have MBAs or the ruling class has to talk about diversity, they’ll produce boys who can do that.” 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.” 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. If Brexit didn’t work out, the Oxford Tories could always just set up new investment vehicles inside the EU, like Rees-Mogg, or apply for European passports, like Stanley Johnson." Formula predicts who will win". Stuff. Archived from the original on 14 December 2014 . Retrieved 14 December 2014.

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

A father of a child at the school said that what I may not understand is that Eton is itself a charity.Welcome to the “chumocracy”, in England a modern word but an ancient notion. Early in the 19th century the radical pamphleteer William Cobbett derided the complacent self-interest of Britain’s ruling caste – he called it The Thing. In Simon Kuper’s Chums meet the new Thing. Same as the old Thing.

Chums - Profile Books Chums - Profile Books

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”. The picture portrayed is not a pretty one. In many ways what happened to those youngsters during the 1980s haunts us now in the 2020s. 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.

Podcast & Video

Simon Kuper (6 March 2006). "All the time in the world". ESPNcricinfo . Retrieved 13 September 2011.