Different class

Sir Graphus

Eton, though, which is not an especially academic school, gets 80 or 90 of its boys into Oxbridge every year. How so? It isn't quite a meritocracy, is it?

ajs

I hope the Head Man at Eton - or someone who has the facts - can give us the academic achievements of those lads who got places at Cambridge and Oxford for say the last 5 years?

Dave Short

This seems a very muddled article.

On the one hand, TY says these guys are 'meritocratic' but on the other that the playing field was not level.

There was once a meritocratic Britain. It lasted from perhaps the mid-60s to about the early 90s, and it has gone.

Look at the background of people who made their bones in those years who are in their mid-50s to the 70s, and you will see they did not go to Eton or St Pauls, if they made any money they made it themselves, if they can afford to live in Hampstead (never Notting Hill), they made the money themselves.

We are now a very divided country where people from nowhere feel they cannot get to the top.

Which is why there is a lot of anger in Britain.

Don't be surprised if it erupts.

There is no country in the rest of Europe that I can think of where such an article, lauding the privileged classes who went to private schools as meritocratic, could be published.

And let us not forget that the author is only called an 'Honourable' because of the achievements of his father.

What a terrible magazine the Speccie has become.

Herbert Thornton

Like others, I'm not entirely comfortable with this analysis.

I think that what is happening is not so much the aristocracy being replaced by a meritocracy as the aristocracy and politicians quietly metamorphosing into a political class composed of Apparatchiks.

I am using the word in the sense similar to what it meant in the old Soviet Union - i.e. an Apparatchik is a person who is not motivated to either serve his country's best interests or to safeguard the future of its citizens. Instead he aims to make himself secure in the exercise power for its own sake and to engineer material rewards for himself and the Apparatchik class.

David Bouvier

Actually Herbert what is interesting is precisely the emerging possibility that Cameron, Osbourne and Clegg are setting their strategy (as opposed to their tactical manoeuvers) according to what they think is right, and not bothering so much about how it pans out in 5 years time.

It is perhaps the benefit of their financial and social security that they choose to do this.

Herbert Thornton

David

I take your point that men like like Cameron and Clegg already enjoy enough material security and prosperity that they are free to do what they think is right.

But the question is whether what they think is right is also wise.

A sober assessment of how things will pan out in 5 - and indeed 10, 20 and 50 - years time ought, I should have thought, to be a matter of very great importance to them.

For example, is the explosive growth in Britain of Islam something they need not bother about?

Kram Ekosum

A slightly muddled piece from TY but his analysis is MUCH closer to the point than you all realise. Cameron and Clegg are quite similar in both social and psychological make-up. Unlike their main opponent they have little parental guilt and are not dependent on a significant minority for their status. They won leadership against the odds within their parties purely on merit. Of course one can argue that their opposition was not great but that is a separate argument. Their sheer material comfort BUT ALSO added lack of intellectual embarrassment means that they are neither chasing dollar/pound signs nor hooked by the theories of so called gurus and economic geniuses. Contrary to popular belief they are not retards; have been quite well educated but still appreciate their weaknesses. They are far less likely to be grandiose and hubristic unlike both the "old school" High Tories and the new school neo-thatcherites. Remember that Thatcher and Son's were and STILL are mesmerised by money..... The Coalition if it survives can be the first government for over fifty years to be less concerned with being re-elected and more worried about long term policy.