Johnson, Cameron, Rees-Mogg, Gove and Cummings all feature in this look at the hidden depths of our current political establishment and its inextricable link to Eton and, in particular, Oxford University' Jacob Rees-Mogg speaks at the Oxford Union Society in 1991. Listening are Kenneth Clarke and John Patten. Photograph: Edward Webb/Alamy

Chums by Simon Kuper — the Oxford breed of political bluff Chums by Simon Kuper — the Oxford breed of political bluff

And it's not as if politicians should ever be called to account for their lies ... anyway.. who was lying? It's just that facts are boring. Norton-Taylor, Richard (20 March 2021). "The Happy Traitor by Simon Kuper review – the extraordinary story of George Blake". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 2 July 2023.

Speakers

In truth,” writes Kuper, with an even-handedness surely acquired during his early schooling in the Netherlands, “almost everyone who gets into Oxford is a mixture of privilege and merit in varying proportions.” Though mostly privilege. At the start of the 21st century, private schools (which at the time educated about 7 per cent of the population) supplied around half of Oxford’s domestic student intake. Kuper quotes the former Labour minister Andrew Adonis: “The place felt like one huge public school to which a few others of us had been smuggled in by mistake.” I don't want to put in any spoilers but Kuper quietly builds up a case to show the generation of Oxford Tories, were shaped by the empty debating rhetoric of the Oxford Union and the facile skills that PPE degrees inculcated into them (basically to acquire the sheen of knowing the surface detail of many things but nothing of substance). These forces created the empty and spineless political class so typical of Cameron, Johns Kuper, Simon (18 September 2019). "How Oxford University shaped Brexit — and Britain's next prime minister". Financial Times . Retrieved 1 July 2023.

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

P, Ullekh N. (1 December 2013). "2014 FIFA World Cup: Simon Kuper, football writer, lists teams to watch out for". The Economic Times. ISSN 0013-0389 . Retrieved 1 July 2023. In his 2019 diary, following the election of the current Prime Minister, Alan Bennett wrote “It’s a gang, not a government.” HowTheTricolorGotItsStripes is a highly entertaining and likeable history of flags by Ukrainian ex-cabinet Minister Dmytro Dubilet and was originally published in Ukrainian 🇺🇦 Running the country or ruining the country? Tell me when it’s time to get out the knitting needles. In Chums, Simon Kuper reminds us that a lot of Brexiteers – Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Michael Gove – entered Elysium at a golden moment, the mid-1980s; the pinnacle of Thatcherism, the age of Brideshead on TV. Being silly was serious business. They carried their Arcadian personalities and politics into the rest of their lives – and Kuper, a fellow alumnus, loathes them for it.In Chums, Kuper observes that Classics is by far the most common degree among Tory Brexiteers. “[Johnson is] a very seventh rate Homer, rather than a modern analyst who reads a lot of documents and then digests them... What is true has never been something he’s particularly interested in. He’s a myth maker.” King of all he surveyed': Boris Johnson as President of the Oxford Union with the Greek minister for culture Melina Mercouri

Chums: Updated with a new chapter - Simon Kuper - Google Books Chums: Updated with a new chapter - Simon Kuper - Google Books

Opening in 1963 New York, to Renaissance Florence, to the birth of theatre in fifth-century Athens, and the Sex Pistols shattering Thatcherite Britain - take your seat for the history of performance. 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."

🍪 Privacy & Transparency

He says now: “My mother was so embarrassed because it made the New York Times. She said, ‘How dare you ask people those questions?’” But in fact, the sex was just a cover, says Luntz: “I knew it would be so controversial that no one would think, ‘Actually this was a poll done for a political campaign’.” He slipped in two questions about the union that were intended to identify which candidate Johnson should strike a deal with about trading second-preference votes. It helped this new breed, Kuper argues, that at the union, they were often joking among themselves. The Oxford University Labour Club, high on Billy Bragg and miners’ solidarity marches, boycotted the debating chamber (one result, Kuper suggests, was that they “never learned to speak”). The political big beasts on the left in the second half of the 80s, in university terms, were the Miliband brothers, Dave and Ted, and Eddie Balls and Yvette Cooper, organising rent protests at their respective colleges. The young Keir Starmer, who did his undergraduate degree at Leeds, arrived in 1985 and made a stand about supporting the print workers at Wapping. Johnson could raise predictable guffaws in union debates when characterising socialist students as “retreating into their miserable dungareed caucuses”. SK: I certainly think they should do that. I was asked to give a talk at Eton recently and I was interested to go just to see it as a social phenomenon, I’ve never been inside Eton before. In the end, I said no because they wouldn’t even pay my train fare from London and a taxi. Full List of Kennedy Scholars - Kennedy Memorial Trust". www.kennedytrust.org.uk . Retrieved 2 July 2023.

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

Kuper's book Barça: The Rise and Fall of the Club that Built Modern Football appeared in 2021. It won the Sunday Times award for Football Book of the Year 2022. [29] Zoekresultaten voor simon kuper | Zoeken | Het Financieele Dagblad". fd.nl . Retrieved 10 July 2023. A] highly entertaining, and often infuriating examination of the clique of Oxford Tories that gave us Brexit' 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. 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.They aren't just colleagues - they are peers, rivals, friends. And, when they walked out of the world of student debates onto the national stage, they brought their university politics with them. The trouble is, this short book is exactly the sort of lazy, provocative essay that he criticises as being at the heart of Oxford thinking. No one else but an Oxford grad could have tried to write a serious book based on a handful or written sources, a docu-drama, some personal reflections, and chats with people he already knew. His book The Football Men, which was published in 2011, offered a collection of articles about the world of football over a span of 13 years, along with new pieces written specifically for this book. The Independent wrote that "Simon Kuper is a refreshing antidote to the current media obsession with 'getting the nannies [nanny goats = quotes]', however banal, from players. He doesn't mince his words: talking of past greats, he dismisses Bobby Charlton as "a dullard", Michel Platini "a weak character" and Pele "a talking puppet." [28]