Posh And Posher Review: It’s a Toff Off
January 26, 2011 by Lucy Doyle
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POSH AND POSHER: WHY PUBLIC SCHOOL BOYS RUN BRITAIN: Wednesday 26th January, BBC Two, 9PM
“The play-thing of a privileged elite who dominate politics once more. Is this what Westminster has become?”
These are the straight-to-the-point opening words of Andrew Neil in tonight’s Posh and Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain, which asks, “has our politics become the reserve of the privileged once more?”
Neil certainly makes it hard to argue otherwise: from start to finish, we are confronted with a series of facts and statistics that all drive home the point that modern politics has become disproportionately represented by the rich and public school educated. Three quarters of the coalition cabinet are millionaires; David Cameron, Nick Clegg and George Osborne all went to schools that now charge fees higher than the average wage; a third of today’s Labour front bench went to Oxford or Cambridge; Eton has produced 19 prime ministers; around seven per cent of the UK population go to fee paying schools, yet this accounts for half of the cabinet. And so on… You get the point.
What’s interesting is that although what Andrew Neil questions is not necessarily new ground, it does ask questions that have not explicitly been answered – or solved – by the political world. While many of us take for granted the “if you haven’t been to Eton or Oxford, you ain’t coming in” door policy of Westminster without a second thought, Neil reminds us that this wasn’t always the case. The grammar school system created a means of opportunity for high achieving pupils whose parents couldn’t afford expensive fee paying schools, and thus paved the way for a 33 year period in politics where all of our Prime Ministers – from Harold Wilson to John Major – were educated at state schools. Indeed, Neil attributes his own grammar school education to his success as a journalist and broadcaster: by his own admittance, he now lives the lifestyle “many posh people live” (home is “poshest borough in London” – Kensington) but he started off life in a council house in Paisley.
With the demise of grammar schools, Neil points to the current crop of forty something political leaders who are the first ‘post grammar school’ generation. He says: “30 years on from the end of the grammars, it’s no coincidence that public school boys have triumphed. Without the grammars, there’s simply less competition. And that means politics is missing out on a lot of potential.”
Through a series of archive political footage, various visits across Britain, and interviews (he speaks to everyone from Peter Mandelson and Tony Parsons to a squirming Sarah Teather who admits “it’s not a good thing” that politicians don’t represent the majority); the documentary is a thorough examination of modern politics and considers the argument from both sides. However, it is clear that total impartiality is not the name of the game: Neil brags of his own success, “in my case, it was hard work and ambition, rather than daddy’s money”. Because of this, Neil tends to portray present day politicians in a ‘nice but dim’ manner. Lord Hurd, former conservative Cabinet Minister, defends David Cameron, telling Neil (albeit over tea at his exclusive London club):” He’s intelligent and that’s why he is Prime Minister. It’s not because he went to Eton; the fact he’s been at Eton has been a total obstacle.”
Meanwhile, there’s comedic value courtesy of Jacob-Rees Mogg (Conservative MP for North East Somerset) who attempts – and fails- to convince Neil that politics does not recruit from a narrow social group. “Come on”, he cries, “my father’s never been a member of parliament” to which Neil retorts, “No, he’s in the House of Lords!”
Thought provoking and provocative, Posh and Posher will leave you questioning – as Neil’s intention – if it will ever again be possible for a prime minister to work their way up to the top, without class and privilege. Neil hopes for meritocracy once more, but argues ultimately: “If politicians are already ‘posh’, they’re about to become even posher.”
Thanks for highlighting the value of grammar schools.
We have many non fee paying grammar schools in Northern ireland that the sinn fein education minister is trying to scrap.
NI grammar schools send plenty of kids to oxbridge and St Andrews – but something you haven’t mentioned, ACCENT appears to be a barrier to prominent involvement in UK (not local) politics.
If Neil think he has it right then he is wrong. It is not that the “posh” have shut the door in the face of the “ordinary” people, it is just that the ordinary people have found there is no necessity to become political, they rae having a good time and do not need the aggravation of being a politician. It is easy to become an MP if you are motivated and have a reasonable IQ, unfortunately most people are not motivated or those that are do not understand how to influence the broader population. QED.
PS If you do not believe me then go and look at local party meetings and see for yourself.
Hello Andrew
Why is it that those who passed the 11+ exam now mourn the loss of grammar schools, while 11+ failures think that they got cheated?
The Sunday Times magazine of 11 Jan 2009 reported that Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell FRS was an 11+ failure. She is one of the world’s leading astrophysicists and arguably Britain’s top woman scientist. As a postgraduate student she was the first to discover radio pulsars.
If the results of the 11+ examination were always correct, then casting 75% of youngsters to a second-rate education may have been a price worth paying, but I don’t think that the results of that exam were always correct.
I was an 11+ failure – but I retired a few years ago from the top of the senior lecturer salary scale at a college of further education. I had been a Chartered Engineer, Member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, and a Member of the British Institute of Management.
I remember wondering if an Oxford graduate with whom I was working had failed to fully use his degree, or whether I had been fortunate to get to a similar position.
I gathered suppport to encourage Standard Life to demutualise. And if I had known then what I know now, I would have changed the outcome of the Equitable Life debacle. I think that the non-GARs (later policyholders) were cheated. If they had been organised, and I could do that now, then we would have refused to pay to underwrite the preferential terms of the GARs which we hadn’t been warned about.
There is no way that the agreement between the two groups of policyholders would been approved if the losers had been organised.
Great programme though I’m sad to see that the removal of Grammar schools has had such a profound, though in hindsight, predictable effect. So much for Labour ideology.
Re Andrew Neil and comments on his programme that the 11+ was the water shed. Not so, I passed my 11+, went to a grammar school and lads came into my school at 13, 15 and 17 direct from the secondary modern. They were called late developers and I know a few from these ” late entry ” guys went to OxBridge and other old universities and did exceptionally well. So that system was NOT a final sift, if you showed ability after your 11+, you still got to grammar school
Hi
just watched posh and posher by andrew neil.
I wonder if he dare take this to the next level?
Parliament may be riddled by the posh…
This is a fact.
It’s true for business as well.
This means that this country after centuries…is still being run by
people who have the right name and background, rather than the best.
It should come as no surprise that the country is in the state it is in.
One thing all these people are trained to do, is to deflect crticism and disguise the truth. It’s only programmes like this that highlight the problem before it’s too late.
We’ve got people who are ‘professional’ politicians. Equally…we have these ‘professional’ businessman. They follow pragmatic processes blindly….as this is what their degree courses have said is the right thing to do.
But the country..politics and business…is about real people. Not hypothetical people.
Well done Andrew…
But I dare you to take on the mafia of the business world, the people who actually run the country.
Just enjoyed and agreed with Andrew Neil’s comments on the lack of grammar schools and meritocracy. Very thought provoking. I would like to nominate him as a leader of a “bring back grammar schools movement”. It is so true that their demise has led to the dumbing down of the brighter kids from working class backgrounds, not only in politics but in many walks of life.
The opportunity for social mobility was stripped away by the very party that should have supported it when Labour scrapped grammar schools. Many parents in the 1970s through to the 1980s, who were grammar school eduacted themselves were unable to provide for their children the education they had experienced themselves. Public and private schools flourished while state comprehensives went into decline. For children from parents who could not afford to make choices or didn’t know how to, the choice of school was limited to what was available. Often that was not good nor was it audited or asseseed for its quality, whereas fee paying school relied on being successful. By stripping away this competeive element to our eduaction we disenfranchised a generation of pupils who grew up at the same time as the present ministers we now find in government. We handed this opoortunity for the public school to educate our future politians on a plate.
Well said Neil. A fair and honest appraisal of the present situation EXCEPT you have missed that in the 70s and 80s there was no competetion in the school system that could compete with what everybody believed (perhaps anecdotaly) was a better system in the private sector. Having been in education for these last 40 years one thing that was missing is how we have failed our young people continuously through our education. Hence the reason why we have now moved from a system which did reward merit but is based on status or background. In our day (the 50s and 60s), the world was our oyster, jobs were plentiful and anything we wanted was possible. This is the background that allowed your PMs and ministers of days gone by to come from. Not so in the 70s and 80s where education had the opportunity to be the way to forge ahead, yet one where our state schools failed to grasp the mettle. The chances were not possible because of second rate schools and families were lucky if there was a good school locally to send children to. Grammar schools – yes I went to one of those. It took me 20 years to feel that I had made any sort of success of my life but yet still have to compete with PhD, Oxbridge or the old boy network in a career that should be based on experience and knowledge. You are right – we have missed the chance but all things that go round come round.. Our young people hope!!
There were a number of things in your program tonight that could have been better emphasised, such as the aversion of many voters to the diviseness of the 11-plus becoming responsible for the continued lack of grammar schools, hence contributing to the demise of meritocracy.
The word never mentioned was GENETICS, to the extent that one wonders if you are also a member of the flat earth society. Successful parents will tend to pass on the genes that contributed to their success, so we should not be surprised that their chilren become successful, and rise to positions of power.
Basically it seems to me that Andrew Neil is saying we need the grammar schools back ( or a new revamped version for the 21st century)so that ‘ordinary folk’ can get to Oxford, do PPE, network and become MPs via SPADlife. The way I see it the grass roots constituency parties should not allow themselves to be pushed around from above like having the ‘bright young stars’ parachuted in to stand. If local people with local knowledge of the real world thought they might actually have a chance to make a difference there could be more csndidates that people could identify with. The pollster in the programme says the way the candidates were perceived i.e. posh and out of touch had a definite effect on the outcome of the election.
The Labour party is guilty of planting candidates that have gone through the usual route of PPE etc. This is why life long Labour supporters feel they are not represented. Peter Mandelson spoke about the ‘narrowing’ but he was key in the seeding.
It would be interesting to find out ( can anyone tell me?) how many ‘safe seats’ were contested by local or parachuted candidates. I hope there are more local…..
Finally, it has been said that only rich people will be able to afford to go into politics because of the costs involved as if MPs are paid so little compared to other occupations. If those other occupations are merchant bankers, industrialists etc that is true BUT for ordinary people earning average income or even more, to earn &65000 a year even with costs of say, £20000 a year ( and of course we all know how much is still being claimed back) that is pretty good.
Try telling someone earning less than half of an MPs renumeration that MPs are hard done by and see what they say.
And it doesn’t mean that people are not intelligent ehough to be MPs just because they don’t have highly paid jobs either. It was accepted in the programme across the board that the networking options had a major effect on opportunity.
So come on constitiuency parties, Labour, Lib Dem and even Tory, show you won’t be pushed around, let good local people who actually care about what happens to their area and have experience of the real world – not just the OxWest bubble, see they have a chance. Then,maybe, the toffs will lose their stranglehold over the rest of us.
I thoroughly enjoyed Andrew Neil’s programme this evening and agree with what he had to say.It was so nice to see my old school once more and listen to the new female Headmaster.Life has not changed so much. It has always been about not what you know but who you know but it certainly helps if you are bright enough to take advantage of the opportunities that prevail.
Enjoyed Posh and Posher which I fully agreed with. Now lets have a similar programme on the military selection
Dear Andrew
I wholeheartedly agree that the demise of grammar schools has reduced social mobility. My mother Irene Harries and husband Peter Mowday (both deceased) came from working class backgrounds and were recognised by their teachers as able pupils. Their teachers supported them to achieve their potential. My husband Peter attended teacher training college in late 1950s and became a successful and well loved Head Teacher. My mother went to Newnham College Cambridge in 1930s and read Chemistry. She worked as a biochemist and chemistry teacher. She married a neurosurgeon. She had two daughters both of whom attended an independant school (St Paul’s Girl’s School) and became doctors.
I would support the reintroduction of ‘grammar schools’ with increased flexibility to allow children to transfer at Year 7 to 10 if appropriate. High quality vocational schools for less academic pupils would also be necessary.
I am a Community Paediatrician and work with children from disadvantaged backgrounds. I am sad that they do not have the same opportunuity of social mobility as my husband and mother.
Mrs Jo Mowday (Dr J Harries)
I grew up on a council estate and at school wasn’t academically aware to even be offered the 11+. I spent my time at the Secondary hellhole I was sent to trying to avoid being physically damaged. After school I had to re-educate myself from scratch and many years later when I heard that the school had been closed and bulldozed to the ground I felt sad, not because of a sense of loss but because it reminded me of the damage that was done to me and all the other kids that were unfortunate enough to have been sent there.
I managed to luck my way into university as a mature student and met many people from privileged backgrounds and in my experience a lot of them were equally as messed up by their schooling and home lives, just in a different way. I don’t believe in “Them and Us”, there is only rich us and poor us.
Knowledge is not difficult to attain if you have the will for it but most working class kids aspire to wealth and stability above all things. Wealthy Eton boys running the country is no surprise to me because their aspirations are naturally geared in that direction. So if they want to run the country I say let them, I certainly wouldn’t want to do it. I’m far too busy ensuring that my kids don’t have to endure the poverty that I experienced.
btw. I really hope the girl patronized by that pillock for wanting to be a hairdresser went on to become a talented hairdresser, which of course has as much merit as anything else.
Andrew Neil is correct which is why I sent my child to a top public school
This weekend my 14 year old nephew (local state school plays football and squash at county level) suffered serious leg injury playing a county match representings chool
Clever ambitious boy and has just started GCSE course with important assessments this term
school have excluded him for rest of term told him cannot attend school wearing a full leg plaster”for health and safety reasons “there is a minimal homework course being offered
This would not happen at private school.
this is why private education wins over state private is ambitoius state is regualtion bound
There’s a simple solution – albeit one that Neil couldn’t bring himself to articulate.
Abolish private education. Create a level playing field and force the privileged to interact with those that aren’t. Then instruct Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews to award places on merit only.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to insist that all MPs should have worked for at least five years in an ordinary job before they’re allowed to put themselves forward as candidates, too.
Hear! hear! Mark G I agree. We cannot achieve a more cohesive society until we all have the opportunity of an excellent educational base. We need more good schools and smaller ones. Not everyone would want to go on to higher education, it wouldn’t matter. We would have a more fulfilled populace understanding, hopefully, what their unique talents are.
Along with this ‘radical’ idea (sarcasm here) of sharing a good education we need to understand that we can no longer support our fashion of permitting a few people having exorbitant wealth while others starve…but I am creeping onto another topic, let’s begin with parity in educational opportunity.
hi excellent but worrying programme and a very thought provoking programme. I was just interested to know why there was no mention of the civil service…. I thought it was they who ran the country, you know Yes Minister, and all that …..
I attend a public school which is in the HMC, although the program raised some fair points I think it was too harsh on the wealthier ruling class. These people worked hard to get to where they are today and like the under privileged children it is not the choice of a public school boy to be given certain opportunities in life and can you blame him for taking them? Furthermore one could argue that state educated pupils are only raising this issue because they regret not working harder as a student? Surely there must be a reason for this dominance of the wealthier other than ‘having contacts’!
‘MarkG’ says
“Abolish private education. Create a level playing field and force the privileged to interact with those that aren’t. Then instruct Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews to award places on merit only.”
The solution is clearly not to abolish private education, but to offer a viable free alternative. There is no reason why one should penalise those who can afford it. If there is a genuine alternative, then people who go to public schools on bursaries (as I did), will instead go to state schools. I should also add here, that it is easily forgotten that you don’t just get into private schools with money. They also have incredibly high entrance requirements. I had to sit through three days of exams and interviews just to get into the school (this, by the way, is the same for everyone, including the rich). The above statement smacks of “they’re better than us, we must get rid of them in the name of equality”. I hope I am not the only one who sees the danger in this attitude.
An upwardly and downwardly mobile three-tiered system, such as in Germany, would be a much better way of fostering different levels of intelligence. If this were implemented, far fewer people would go to expensive independent schools (for which many parents give up their entire savings), and they would be reduced without any aggressive, class-biased destruction.
As for Oxford and Cambridge, they have always offered their places on the basis of merit. The fact that so many independent school pupils make it in is simply a reflection of how much better prepared and driven they are. Personally I am quite comforted by the thought that (intellectually) the best and brightest are leading this country. The fact that they have gone to the best Universities should surely only speak in their favour.