'The Gilded Cage of the Insider: Chums Review' - Danny Leach

'The Gilded Cage of the Insider: Chums Review' - Danny Leach

In Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, Simon Kuper presents something of an insider’s view of an educational institution which reproduces the political elite of our society. He himself was an Oxford student in the 1980s and the book is in part informed by his own experience there, as well as interviews with other contemporaries. Indeed, it is his personal experience which informs the best parts of the book, in which Kuper describes the culture of laziness that pervaded the university in that era and identifies the in-groups which proved more influential than anyone could have imagined. These two insights are what drives his analysis of how a well-connected group of Tories managed to make it to the top, and yet do so badly as our leaders. Unfortunately, lacking the political conviction to call for a changed society, Chums remains an interesting set of observations and anecdotes which never quite comes to a convincing conclusion.

Oxford’s self-mythologising has always been a strength, and this seems to have disguised the fact that in the late 20th century, the hardworking Oxford student was a rare breed. Kuper admits that he himself occasionally turned up to a tutorial having skimmed one item from the reading list and it is clear that 30-odd years on he remains in awe of those who could pretend to be ‘reading’ an essay which in fact existed only in their head. This part of the book is interesting and demonstrates that Boris Johnson’s behaviour has been consistent since he was at school. However, it is more of a fun diversion from his theme than a crucial piece of it; some of the worst offenders of the Tory old boy network (David Cameron, for example) are reported to have been good or even model students.

In some respects, the story of a bunch of toffs partying and doing very little work is an unhelpful lens through which to view 21st century Toryism. There have been plenty of so-called sensible Tories in British politics in the last 20 years, who looked and sounded competent and who did have a decent work ethic, and yet set about ransacking the state anyway. It is important to remember that austerity and its consequences were the result of a driven government that could achieve its goals; lazy incompetence is too generous an excuse.

It would be highly unfair to characterise Kuper’s book as primarily about the laziness of students in the 1980s, and as such his analysis does not centre on that. The other major investigation Kuper undertakes is into the societies and social groups which formed the current ruling class of this country. There are interesting revelations, such as how Dominic Cummings got his start in politics working as a researcher for anti-Maastricht Tory MPs, after having organised many of them to speak at Oxford on that very topic. This demonstrated neatly how the old generation of Tory Eurosceptics passed the torch to the new through the system of privilege and patronage that is exemplified at Oxford as anywhere else on earth.

It is in this analysis of networks that Kuper points out that the very best-connected students were those who had come from Eton. This highlights the extent to which money, and maleness, were important to the creation of these social groups, but it also exposes a flaw in his conclusions. Networks from the wealthiest private schools were recreated and only slightly expanded at Oxford University, as opposed to being created from scratch. Had Oxford not existed, the chance is vanishing that such a cohesive class of students would simply abandon the privilege they were granted by their in-group status.

Kuper appears to have given this little thought. One might say it is typical that an Oxford alum might not grasp the possibility that another university could also create a ruling elite, but a glance at the UK’s higher education shows that any sort of Oxbridge “them vs. us” view is sorely outdated. As strongly as the two oldest universities in the UK hang on to their exclusive status, they now contend with Durham, St. Andrews, UCL and others snapping at their heels. As for the rest of the “Russell Group,” the group itself is effectively a club established solely to deny assimilated polytechnics the legitimacy which its members derive from their pre-Major university status. The idea that the rest of the UK’s higher education hierarchy would disappear with Oxbridge is of course nonsense, and Kuper does not suggest it will. But on the other hand, he fails to consider the ramifications of its endurance.

Towards the end of the book, Kuper talks about his experience at a European university. No class distinctions were so stark there and as a result, such a class structure was not reproduced, and indeed no ruling elite persists quite so much in that country as it does in ours. His observations are fascinating, but his cause and correlation ought to be reversed. In most European countries, there is already greater equality of income than in the UK, and when their aristocracies died off, so did the aristocratic culture. We allowed our aristocracy to survive, and the wealthiest in this country have always cherished the opportunity to join their ranks, usually by entering their children into one of only a handful of elite schools, and then, of course, Oxford. But there is no thoughtful consideration of how a changed politics could have changed Oxford, and the relationship Kuper sees between political culture and the university is a one-way street.

It is here that the author’s “inside view” starts to obstruct his vision. Simon Kuper is a long-time Financial Times journalist, who self-identifies as having a middle-class background, and who went to Oxford. As someone with foreign heritage and a non-private schooling, it is clear that he did not feel like a “true” insider at university, and yet by any reasonable metric he now is one. He sighs at the fact that so many politicians and journalists went to school together, while out of hand dismissing the rise of the one major party leader of the last decade who did not go to Oxford: Jeremy Corbyn. Of course, there should be no expectation for a journalist to like a politician, indeed politics would be better if there were fewer political journalists writing about their close friends. In this case, on the other hand, his analysis has a critical blind spot because he simply does not think Corbyn worthy of discussion.

One could say that Ed Miliband went to Oxford, yet he was certainly not welcomed as part of the gang. Chums even goes as far as to say that the Oxford University Labour Club, chaired by Miliband, was of very minimal relevance in Oxford society. What Kuper might have noticed had he looked was that both leaders faced horrendous mauling in the press – not for their background, but for speaking out about the cosy culture and lack of oversight enjoyed by the (mostly Oxford-educated) press pack and economic elite. On the other hand, Cameron, May, and Johnson all faced comparatively easy rides, despite their vastly different levels of engagement in the boys’ club society culture at Oxford. He sometimes comes close to recognition of how Toryism itself is more important to the Oxford Tories than the vessel of its reproduction, but never quite gets there. The important thing about the Oxford Tory is that even after they leave Oxford they remain a dedicated Conservative.

Kuper concludes that what we need is an overhaul of Oxford and Cambridge, via conversion to graduate only institutions, or by increasing academic rigour to create true research institutions out of them. Yet, he lacks the courage to call for the abolition of the private schools that create the inequalities he felt at Oxford, or indeed the political insight to suggest closing the gaping income inequality that make such private schools viable in the first place. Even the previously promised second part of the Leveson enquiry into the press might blunt the power of the Oxford-alumni lobby by taming its most vicious attack dog. In the end though, the gilded cage of the insider obstructs Kuper’s view and leaves Chums an interesting read, and a lesser work than it could be.

[Danny Leach is a second year PPEist at Pembroke College. He was OULC Co-Chair Ex-Officio this term.]