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

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

• 
  books4chess

  “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."
  
  I don’t know what I expected about a book called Chums, focused on the British political elite, their time at Oxbridge, and a look into how the establishment cemented - and continues to influence - the governmental structure we see today.
  
  But it was not fun. Amongst learning many politicians who never appeared to particularly skilful yet became prominent governmental figures happened to be related to the Queen, along with former Oxford protocols being as elitist as Abercrombie (check the documentary), there wasn’t much to be proud of.
  
  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.
  
  I wanted to hate Kuper for how much he placed Oxford on a pedestal. Yet I understand why he does and rather begrudgingly, I fear I agree. This isn’t to say that the majority of students are linked to the corrupt assembly line that our country is built on - if anything, the book highlights how even large populations of the students are just as ‘outside’ as the rest of us peasants.
  
  Reflecting on this book with current real-world examples has not been comforting. Given how the government wants to minimise humanity degrees despite George Osborne literally only having a History degree prior to being UK Chancellor, and in a society where children of millionaires consider themselves ‘working class’ has left my outlook rather bleak on the future. After all, as the book quotes, what amazing security to assume to have always been well-off would suggest one would always be well-off”.
  
  Proceed with caution.
• 
  T

  Rhetorically engaging, fantastically written, and well researched. This book has all the hot gossip from Oxford in the 1980s, exploring how that generation of graduates was shaped, and how they are now shaping Britain. Cherwell Magazine serves as the diary for the Tories who now dominate British politics, and the Oxford debating club as a kind of lyceum for our current era. It is here we see the making of modern Britain in the post-Thatcher era.
  
  One key theme is a lack of seriousness. Whilst war, famine, the fading empire, stagflation and an identity crisis moulded the prime minister's of the pre-Thatcher era, the contemporary leaders haven't faced any real struggle. This, Kuper believes, is one of the reasons why our current elite seem "out of touch" to many of their compatriots.
  
  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.
  
  Also, the idea that the Oxford Debating Club is the only thing that separates Starmer and Johnson's powers of rhetoric seems quite a stretch. The lack of a transformative policy rollout and almost German avoidance of charisma seems to be the reason for Starmer's poor performance on the public stage. Also, his job as a lawyer, rather than a dilletante muckracker, is for me the main divergence, not some silly hobby from 40+ years ago.
• 
  Stephen

  I found this to be an interesting little book. It looks at the core of the Chumocracy - how the ruling caste went to school with each other, went to university with each other, married each other, and are sending their children on the same trajectory to perpetuate themselves. I think that I knew this already, but the book provides an interesting data point.
  
  The description of the system is good, but the analysis is a bit thin. Admittedly, Eton and Oxford do have a grip on the ruling class in the UK, but it would be far more interesting to understand why that might be? After all, the UK has more than one ancient and famous university, there is more than one ancient school. What is the grip of these institutions that helps them to maintain their place. It could be money and endowments, but these exist elsewhere. We are never quite given an insight into why that might be.
  
  Does the narrow gene pool of the British ruling class constitute a problem? I think that the answer is provided by the results that the system generates. If Britain were a prosperous place, with a well settled and contented population, which commanded the respect of our near continental neighbours, which was valued by our allies and feared by our foes, then it wouldn't be much of a problem because it would have generated a positive outcome.
  
  Sadly, none of this is the case. Britain is a place whose prosperity is ebbing away, riven by factional disputes about the distribution of what little wealth there is. The relatively high levels of inequality are fracturing society to give rise to a seething and discontented population. Our near neighbours think that we are mad owing to Brexit, our allies treat us as an afterthought and we are as fearsome as Dennis Healy's dead sheep. This is the outcome of a narrowly focussed ruling class that lacks either foresight or vision.
  
  Why is this? At the end of the day, the sorry fact is that an Eton and Oxford education isn't all that good. Both institutions fail to prepare our leaders to run the country. Both give too much weight upon style over substance. The author claims that reform is in the air. We have yet to see any evidence of this. When they do reform, then maybe Britain will be a better place to live. However, their rule may take a temporary suspension following heir lack of vision becoming too evident. The country is in a mess at the moment and the Oxford Chums are offering no hope of a happy way out.
• 
  Owen McArdle

  Having been to Cambridge myself a lot more recently than the Oxford the author describes, I was interested to read the student anecdotes from the 1980s and compare them to my own experience – something which is addressed explicitly in the final chapter. And the first half of the book was largely enjoyable for that reason.
  
  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:
  
  ‘Cameron calculated that if the Leave cause were led by non-Oxbridge outsiders like Nigel Farage, Remain would win.’
  
  Not only is that an absurd thing to say, but within a couple of chapters Dom Cummings is being held up as an example of an Oxford tutorial blagger!
• 
  Caleb Loh

  Thank you Harith for the recommendation. An interesting story about the “Oxford Brexiteers”: Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and their friend Dan Hannan. They came of age in Oxford during the 1980s, when it was noted that “the Oxford of 1988 was indistinguishable from the Oxford of 1688”. They all studied un-modern subjects like Classics, English, and History; their political careers were rooted in the Oxford Union; and their attitudes to power shaped by the Bullingdon Club.
• 
  Simon Howard

  In his 2019 diary, following the election of the current Prime Minister, Alan Bennett wrote “It’s a gang, not a government.”
  
  Kuper’s book serves to demonstrate the surprising degree of accuracy in the caricature of the current Government as a gang of privileged university friends playing political games. It also explores the degree to which this has been true in the past, and highlights the unhealthy degree to which our political classes have been drawn from a narrow background. His particular focus is on Oxford University, and specifically the arts and humanities degrees at that University. (I didn’t previously know that traditionally the upper classes look down upon science degrees as too ‘practically useful’.)
  
  It’s not long since I read
  Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England, an angry account of the damage inflicted by private boarding schools which skirts around similar territory. The tones of the two books are notably different: while Beard is viscerally angry, Kuper feels more inquisitive. He also comes up with some interesting suggestions on how to correct the problems he identifies.
  
  I’m glad I read this.
• 
  Zahraa

  There's only so many times I can hear "Oxford" & "Tori"
• 
  Ruhi Dang

  It's a fascinating and easy to get through read. It's a must read if you live in the UK. If you ever thought of the poor pandemic response, or the dismal Brexit strategy or the general decline of contemporary Britain and wondered, how did we get here?, this book is your answer. It's part realisation, part eye opener about the Eton-Oxford privilege that put a number of men on the front lines, making policies and decisions they understand nothing about. 'It would be nice to think that disasters will prompt change, a sweeping out of the old order, but we all know how Britain works.'
• 
  Martin Jones

  In early 1983, as a diffident grammar school boy, I sat in a centuries old sitting room, beside a burbling open fire, enduring an interview for a place to study English at Oriel College, Oxford. I was muttering something about Shakespeare.
  
  “You talk of Anthony and Cleopatra in a detached manner, Mr Jones,” said the languid interviewer. “Tell me, would you die for love?”
  
  I didn’t get in.
  
  At this point my fate diverged from that of the people who populate the pages of Chums, young men and women, mostly men, who attended Oxford in the 1980s and then went on to top jobs in government. Author, Simon Kuper, who was an Oxford undergraduate at that time, describes the background of these people, and how their university years influenced later careers.
  
  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.
  
  First, there’s the interesting historical background of the time, which tended to push forward entitled youths from a privileged background. The 1980s marked a reversal of the general trend to a more egalitarian society, which had been gathering pace from the 1940s to the 1970s. In 1979, British income inequality reached its lowest point ever recorded. Then Margaret Thatcher came along. Following the economic privations of the 70s, inequality widened again, the upper classes regained confidence, and started indulging in romantic fantasies about a lost Britain. Fittingly, a 1981 television production of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited was very popular. Young Jacob Rees Mogg, who was to enter Oxford’s Trinity College in the late 80s, even took to dressing up as an Edwardian gentleman.
  
  This was the atmosphere into which Etonian Boris Johnson arrived at Oxford in 1983, the same year I was there for my interview. After getting accepted, Johnson and others like him spent their university years honing peculiarly British political skills, which involved treating politics as a game. The Oxford Union debating society is set up like the House of Commons chamber, though Union debates never result in real policies with real consequences. When not fantasy debating, the youngsters would have fun trying to get themselves elected to the few administrative positions on offer at the Union.
  
  Many then took the idea of politics as a game into their subsequent parliamentary careers. Some commentators, like the academic George Steiner for example, feel that historically, a traditional lack of political seriousness has acted in a positive way, as a protection against extremism in Britain. On the other hand a lack of seriousness, and often basic administrative competence, can have disastrous consequences when something like a pandemic comes along. Then it is people who learnt their trade many years before amongst jolly japes of the Oxford Union, who have to coordinate a complex, society-wide response.
  
  And that’s the overriding feeling of Chums - of people who have led protected lives, bringing about very painful and real consequences through their carelessness.
  
  From a personal point of view, I think back to that interview and that rejection. The young men and women who got through tended to see themselves as chosen. Ironically, the story of Chums shows people caught up in the patterns of their time. They are not special - they are just living the lives that their history makes for them. And the special place they entered - well that’s riven by a constantly churning sense of who’s in or out. When those Oxford boys grew up, one set - Johnson, Gove and Cummings - supported leaving the EU, primarily as a means of taking revenge on another set - David Cameron’s remain Oxford boys, for a perceived sense of exclusion from the golden circle. The leavers, using their own frustrations as a starting point, played on that too common feeling amongst people in general that someone else has the power and prestige. Game players like Boris Johnson, imbued with fantasy visions of Britain’s past, messed around with the fire of nationalist sentiment, simply to further their ridiculous desire to climb the greasy pole as an end in itself. It was all part of a game, which had disastrous real world consequences, when a system of international cooperation which, as Kuper points out, had brought unprecedented prosperity to Britain, was torn apart.
  
  There’s nothing very golden about the golden circle of the British establishment. I don’t know if it even exists when most of those in it seem to act out of a bitterness that they are supposedly excluded. That’s how I felt getting to the end of Chums. As I have long suspected, thinking in terms of whether you are in or out is not healthy. You are where you are, and it’s best to make that the place where you are meant to be.
• 
  Andy Walker

  Having just read a book that highlights how social inequality in Britain means that the north is discriminated against, it was interesting to read this book, Chums, which explains to a large degree why such inequality has been perpetuated in our society. Simon Kuper's book explains precisely what it promises to do on the cover - "how a tiny caste of Oxford Tories took over the UK". From the upper echelons of government and the state apparatus to disasters like the financial crash, Brexit and the Covid response, the Oxford Tory clique is to be found at the scene of the crime. This chumocracy, overwhelmingly male, sees politics - and life - as a mere game, the object of which is to enrich themselves, personally and financially, in the cause of perpetuating the class system. That they have been allowed to do this is an indictment on our society and the way it currently works. Inequality and privilege are baked in and if you're not part of the club, then tough. Like one of the reviewers quoted on the book's dust cover, I got angrier and angrier the more I read this book. However, anger on it's own won't change the system that allows such inequality and blatant unfairness to endure - we need radical change, to our institutions, to the education system, to our politics, to business and to society as a whole.
• 
  Andy Lopata

  An excellent book that explores how the UK has been ruled by an entitled elite whose abilities depend on family networks, the right schools, a chumocracy and , above all, the ability to form an argument on any topic irrespective of any in depth understanding of the subject at hand or its repercussions.
  
  The lifelong links between so many people at the top of our society is shocking, even if not surprising. The shallow nature of their learning and ability is worse.
  
  The author clearly has picked a camp and Conservative voters and Brexit fans probably won’t like this book. But they should pay attention to it and ask themselves, irrespective of your political beliefs, what qualities they want in their leaders.
  
  Based on this book, it’s not clear that we have evolved since the 17th Century.
  
  Everyone should read this. And it’s not a chore. Well written, engaging and fascinating. As well as more than a little depressing.
• 
  Tom Boniface-Webb

  very well researched
  
  This book is impeccably researched. The author really knows his stuff. It’s all fun and games that Bojo and his gang ruled the country, until it wasn’t and people needlessly died during the pandemic because of their ineptitude.
• 
  anna

  just… no words. get them out. now.
• 
  Georgina Hicks

  An interesting read demonstrating how British politics is engulfed in elitism.
• 
  David Cutler

  Kuper is an excellent journalist. He knows how to tell a story swiftly, with telling detail and characterisation.
  
  This book feels pretty personal to me. I went to Oxford, rather to my own surprise, and the first in my family and in my school. I went there just slightly ahead of this cast of characters. I even read PPE, not to become a politician but because it was so interesting. So large parts of this book feel recognisable and well described.
  
  I arrived in 1979, shaped by a long period of relative social equality and mostly a centrist Government and I think that was true of many of my contemporaries. It strikes me that things changed very quickly shortly afterwards for students that were arriving under an established Thatcher Government and with a monetarist mind set.
  
  Kuper is very convincing as to how private schools, Conservative political attitudes of the 80's, the self confidence and style of Oxford education in the humanities led to the attitudes and style displayed by the PM and to a great extent by David Cameron. What he doesn't investigate is how that very unattractive and facile Gamesmanship has been allowed to succeed by other parties.
  
  An important and upto the minute first draft of political history
• 
  Luke Stokle

  Intriguing and polemical, but Kuper’s arguments are often superficial. His writing belongs to the Oxbridge contrarianism he censures so much. Recommended for anyone wanting to learn more about how Oxford felt in the 80s, but anyone looking for serious, nuanced analysis should look elsewhere
• 
  Hilay Hopkins

  What a terrible cast of characters who masquerade as the intelligentsia in the not so United Kingdom. A Jelly Baby has more of a social conscience than this lot. The book is interesting as it focuses the mind on the motivations of these people. Makes me cringe.
  But 7th July 2022 makes this story easier to bear. He’s gone. Well going anyway.