Tim Wigmore

Tough luck, old boys

Contrary to public perception, there are ever fewer Old Etonians in Parliament, says <em>Tim Wigmore</em>

For a centre-right political party, the Conservatives are oddly obsessed with where people went to school. Michael Gove and Lady Warsi both lamented the number of Old Etonians in influential positions earlier this year. It may not have been coincidence that, within five months, both had moved posts: there remains a potent undercurrent of class tension in today’s Conservative party.

The charge sheet is simple. David Cameron has stacked the corridors of power with those who share his black-and-turquoise old school tie. How can it be that British politics has regressed into the chumocracy days of Harold Macmillan? Yet the prominence of Old Etonians today is not a throwback to an era that we thought we’d left behind — it’s a last hurrah.

Here are some facts to mollify those who despair at David Cameron and his ruling clique. When Winston Churchill returned to power in 1951, he led a party with 76 Old Etonian MPs. There are only 19 in David Cameron’s Conservative party today, and the number will be further depleted when Sir George Young and James Arbuthnot both step down as MPs at the next election. Rather than being stronger than ever, as the conventional wisdom assumes, the role of Old Etonians in British politics may be in inexorable decline.

The fall in the number of Old Etonian MPs reflects a wider trend. Despite all the calls to bring back the blue-collar conservatism of John Major, in fact 60 per cent of Tories in 1992 were independently educated, compared with 54 per cent today. The number is even lower for the 2010 Conservative intake and parliamentary candidates for 2015. In 1951, 78 per cent of Tories had attended private schools; 72 per cent of the 1979 intake also did so.

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