The social damage caused by Oxford and Cambridge forming British elites at age 18 could be ended if the two universities stopped teaching undergraduates and instead educated adults “who never got a chance first time around”, a Financial Times columnist argues in a new book.
Simon Kuper sets out the idea in Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK. The book traces how the group of public school-educated Conservatives who initiated Brexit – most notably prime minister Boris Johnson – had their style of political rhetoric, worldview and route to power shaped by their privileged life at the university; by its tutorial system, its Oxford Union debating society and its intimate links with the political elite.
