Kuper, Simon (18 September 2019). "How Oxford University shaped Brexit — and Britain's next prime minister". Financial Times . Retrieved 1 July 2023. Kuper, Simon (22 September 2022). "Populism isn't over. It's getting an upgrade". Financial Times . Retrieved 2 July 2023. SK: Both, I think. I’m told that in the foreign office for example, your application is University-blind, so they don’t know when you apply which University you went to. And you are not supposed to reveal it. In contrast, the Financial Times graduate trainee schemes used to recruit only people like me who went to Oxford. And now I think they try not to do that. So you can see that the British elite institutions make those reforms. But it’s difficult when you have these two Universities who obviously have a higher status. In the Private Sector you see that people will take graduates from Oxford over Reading. Chums is not just about the smallness of Britain's privileged elite or the early advantages it enjoys. Simon Kuper goes further ... to critique a system that attaches more importance to winning debates than shaping policy' 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.

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

Kuper, Simon (17 March 2022). "Becoming French is like winning the lottery". Financial Times . Retrieved 2 July 2023. The author tries to win our sympathy by defining himself apart from the establishment subjects of the book, even though he’s an Oxford-educated FT columnist himself. A really interesting book review: thanks. I wonder how much of “Chums” relates to the popular (sic) representations of the Bullingdon Club and its members’ antics!? Engaging and detailed ... [This] may be the last generation of such Oxford Tories, yet their policies may well influence the United Kingdom for generations' Johnson was even fired for fabricating a quote when working with the Times. “[He] has never been an analytical or factual writer. He’s always been an entertainer. He’s a storyteller. His training has been in the Greek Classics.”

Chair

MAL: You’ve spoken about writing on sport from an almost anthropological perspective. What kind of similarities do you find between writing columns on current affairs and writing about Sport? After all, “If your life passage has taken you from medieval rural home to medieval boarding school to medieval Oxford college, and finally to medieval parliament, you inevitably end up thinking: ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ 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.” Simon Kuper’s new book, Chums: How A Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, is, the subtitle promises, the story of how a cadre of Oxford-educated Tories glommed on to power and, ultimately, fomented Brexit. Kuper is a Financial Times columnist who went to university in Oxford in the 1980s at roughly the same time as Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove, David Cameron, Dominic Cummings and many other Tory grandees. 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."

Chums by Simon Kuper — the Oxford breed of political bluff

He thinks the dominance of Oxford and Cambridge has a deleterious effect on British life. “You’re telling 99 per cent of the population: ‘You are never going to be a senior politician, a judge, a newspaper editor, a civil servant… goodbye, you’re done.’ And you say to the 1 per cent, ‘As long as you don’t commit rape and murder, you’re fine. We’ve let you in through the gate.’ It’s hugely pernicious. And it doesn’t allow for development at different ages. It doesn’t allow for lifelong learning. And it’s very much based on birth and school.” Adam Sisman`s definitive biography, published in 2015, revealed much about the elusive spy-turned-novelist; yet le Carré was adamant that some subjects should remain hidden, at least during his lifetime. #TheSecretLifeOfJohnLeCarré is the story of what was left out, and offers reflections on the difficult relationship between biographer and subject. More than that, it adds a necessary coda to the life and work of this complex, driven, restless man. The name-dropping of some of these sources - like Sam Gyimah - is particularly jarring (Gyimah has, rightly, not been forgiven in many quarters for his crooked campaign against Emma Dent Coad). Similarly, making people like Theresa May, Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg the object of discussion without even mentioning the horrendous, often racist, policies they implemented, is a miserable and alienating experience. He went up to Oxford in 1983 as a vessel of focused ambition. Ironic about everything else, he was serious about himself. Within his peer group of public schoolboys, he felt like a poor man in a hurry. He started university with three aims, writes Sonia Purnell in Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition: to get a first-class degree, to find a wife (his parents met at Oxford), and to become union president. At university he was always “thinking two decades ahead”, says his Oxford friend Lloyd Evans.His main argument is that Brexit wouldn’t have happened without the nostalgic, guardians-of-Empire viewpoint of “the Oxocracy”. Kuper is considered one of the most influential voices at the Financial Times. [17] Since joining the publication in 1994, he has held various roles, writing on a wide range of topics, from sports and popular culture to politics. [18] [19]

The born-to-rule Oxford Tories - New Statesman

While Chums damningly examines a very specific cadre of Tories, it’s also an indictment of the whole notion of elite universities. Kuper depicts education at Oxford in the 1980s as loose and shambolic. “I’d like to strip away some of the mystique around Oxford. [Its graduates are] not so brilliant. They sound and write better than they are. And that includes me.” Running the country or ruining the country? Tell me when it’s time to get out the knitting needles. Even during the 1980s when only 13% of people went to Higher Education, less than 0.5% of those graduated from an Oxbridge College, yet 13 of the 17 post war Prime Ministers graduated from Oxford University. Four of them educated at one very exclusive private school in Berkshire (you know the one) 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. I’m afraid I didn’t qualify to go to Oxford – I was far too clever and insufficiently charming – but from those who did, the impression emerges that it was either milk and honey or a brutal injustice.A very interesting, short summing up of the origins of and the road to Brexit as well as a sad one, when all is said and done, as the sunny uplands for the masses seem nowhere in sight, it's there for our chums, the rest don't matter.