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

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Along with former prime ministers May and Blair and Thatcher, Chums has walk-on Oxford parts for Bill Clinton and Benazir Bhutto and Viktor Orbán. Heath had been elected union president in November 1938 after accusing Neville Chamberlain of “turning all four cheeks to Hitler at once”. His infamous book ‘Chums’ was published in 2022 and detailed the Oxford of the ‘80s through a group of Tories who were shaped by their experiences in the Oxford Union. Drawing on his forthcoming book, Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, Kuper will discuss the dynamics and effects of Britain’s ruling class and its ‘chumocracy’, with responses from Mike Savage – a sociologist of elites – and Jane Gingrich, Professor of Comparative Political Economy.

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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.

MAL: Onto ‘Chums’ now, do you think that something like abolishing private school charitable status, would be an effective way to make admissions more meritocratic at university?

Power, Privilege, Parties: the shaping of modern Britain

MH: How do you respond to the argument that while class socialisation begins at school, it is only fully realised at University? The conversation about Chumswill, no doubt, rumble on for years to come, and that conversation – if directed correctly – has so much value. A podcast of this event is available to download from Power, Privilege, Parties: the shaping of modern Britain. Like its London model, it resembled a gentlemen’s club complete with reading rooms, writing room and bar, and, across the garden, Europe’s largest purpose-built debating chamber.

Gove grew into a recognisable Oxford character in outsized glasses, speaking with an exaggerated oratorical air even in daily life. Cherwell was a poor imitation of Private Eye – inaccurate, gnomic and badly written in the trademark Oxford tone of relentless irony, with jokes incomprehensible to outsiders, but it turns out that we weren’t just lampooning inconsequential teenage blowhards. To keep these relationships secret, he made use of tradecraft that he had learned as a spy: code names and cover stories, cut outs, safe houses and dead letter boxes.

Brexit, a conspiracy hatched by public schoolboys in 1980s

Kuper shares his insights into the way the young Oxfordians would debate, communicate and learn the ropes of the manoeuvring that can be seen playing out in government every single day: how to bluff, how to gain allies, how banter can save a debate, and how backstabbing might be able to save ones (political) skin. Instead, Robinson went on to present the BBC’s Today programme (where in October 2021 he told a verbose Johnson, “Prime minister, stop talking)”. But when Kenny told Johnson about the job, he laughed: “Master, don’t you know I am a dyed-in-the-wool Tory? The Brexit hardliners majored in the glorious past, while Kuper with his reliable sense of fairness points out that maligned PPE students (from left and right) mostly backed Remain.

LSE has now introduced wireless for guests and visitors in association with 'The Cloud', also in use at many other locations across the UK. For delegates who wish to obtain a CPD Certificate of Attendance, it is the responsibility of delegates to register their details with a LSE steward at the end of the event and as of 1 September 2014 a certificate will be sent within 28 days of the date of the event attended by the CPD Certification Service. They carried their Arcadian personalities and politics into the rest of their lives – and Kuper, a fellow alumnus, loathes them for it. Sherlock expected the Oxford University Conservative Association’s president Nick Robinson to become the political star, and Johnson to become a “rather good journalist”.

The born-to-rule Oxford Tories - New Statesman

Oxford Union Standing Committee photographed in 1985, showing Nick Robinson, front left, Neil Sherlock, front centre, Boris Johnson, back right. The authors subsequently put forward a formula allowing Kuper to predict that Serbia and Brazil would play the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final.This Black History Month, we’re spotlighting some of our brilliant non-fiction by Black female authors. Chums, which tracks the well-connected Oxford posse who go on to govern Britain, was only released at the end of April but has already received a tonne of rave reviews. Johnson also benefited from the quality of debating competition, says Luntz: “I’ve never seen a class of more talented people than that class of 1984–86 at the Oxford Union. The institution perfected the articulacy that enabled aspiring politicians, barristers and columnists to argue any case, whether they believed it or not.