This is an edited extract from Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK by Simon Kuper, published by Profile on 28 April. This incisive, insightful and timely book compellingly attributes recent British upheavals to rivalries within a tiny Oxford tribe. Instead, Robinson went on to present the BBC’s Today programme (where in October 2021 he told a verbose Johnson, “Prime minister, stop talking)”. In 1831, William Gladstone had made such a powerful anti-reform speech at the union that a friend from Eton alerted his father, the Duke of Newcastle, who offered the 22-year-old prodigy one of the parliamentary pocket boroughs in his gift.

chums: Brexit’s beginnings as a posh Oxford Boris and his chums: Brexit’s beginnings as a posh Oxford

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”. In Chums, Simon Kuper traces how the rarefied and privileged atmosphere of this narrowest of talent pools - and the friendships and worldviews it created - shaped modern Britain. Kuper’s greatest mistake is commonplace among Oxford graduates: they think we care that they went there. 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. As Johnson himself remarked, if you wanted to know how influential the Oxford Union was in British politics, you had only to look at all the photographs of past presidents (and future prime ministers) on its walls.

TheBookOfPhobiaaAndManias traces the rich and thought-provoking history in which our fixations have taken shape. Another attraction of the union was the bar, which – almost miraculously in 80s Britain – stayed open into the early morning after debates, until the deferential local police finally intervened.

An Outsider Takes an Inside Look at the Oxford ‘Chums’ Who

I’m personally sceptical of Oxford becoming a graduate-only university, given the serious issues with graduate funding that means postgraduate study is out of reach for many from lower-income backgrounds.

This is way higher than the portion of the population that goes to private school, not much higher however than the population of sixth formers at private schools.

Chums by Simon Kuper – Review. How Oxford Tories Took Over Chums by Simon Kuper – Review. How Oxford Tories Took Over

If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. At Oxford, the union’s ceaseless debates and election campaigns kept the university buzzing with politics. Kuper captures 1980s Oxford nicely, but his argument that it poisoned national life only holds water if you think Brexit was wicked. The second time around, he disguised his Toryism by presenting himself as an unthreatening funny man – “centrist, social democrat, warm and cuddly,” sums up Sherlock.It goes without saying, reading this history, that the overwhelming influence of a single kind of graduate from a single university (and often a single school, Eton) at the top of British public life has been profoundly damaging. At speakers’ dinners, 20-year-old union “hacks” – the name given to union politicians – mingled with political power brokers up from London.

Chums by Simon Kuper | Waterstones Chums by Simon Kuper | Waterstones

The central thesis of Chumsis that places like the University of Oxford, where in the 1980s strong arguments mattered more than substance, and where the Oxford Union rewarded funny quips and humour over serious discussion, are harmful to society when they play such a central role in our public life. Just makes one wonder: if they spoke with different accents, weren’t affluent, weren’t Nth in a line of family members to have attended the same place – and especially if they were of different ethnicity – would that have ever gone on to where they all are today?

Thus Johnson was not challenged, as he would have been in other times and, indeed, I’ve been told that the Social Democrats actually agreed to have him as President because they thought he was amusing.