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Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago

What a load of nonsense. Kuper’s book, that is.
Anyone from a state school who got into Oxford or Cambridge knows just how tough that it. But it’s not “meritocratic” ?
This feels like an absurd over-generalisation. Only a very small minority of Oxford students will be like Boris Johnson. But hey, let’s forget about all the rest, studying maths, sciences, engineering, medicine … . No, let’s tar them all with the same brush.
The exclusive social bubble being discussed here (which may well have included Kuper) almost certainly amounts to no more than 5% of the Oxford student population.
This book of Kuper’s sounds as intellectually lazy as those it claims to despise.
Brexit happened because the majority of people voting wanted it. There is no conspiracy. “In your guts, you know its nuts”, to paraphrase LBJ. In their guts, the British people as a whole did not believe in the EU. The “why” and the “how” here can differ.

Paul Rogers
Paul Rogers
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

You are certainly right about this being only the 5%. Certainly it was thus in my day as an engineer, which did require a sharp mind, so I would say was meritocratic. The Union (and their little clubs) was just not somewhere ‘normal’ students went.
Kuper’s book does sound like a silly fantasy and one to avoid, as if that is going to be hard. It’s amazing how, with the magical gift of hindsight, intent or coordinated action can be traced back 30 years where there was no such thing at the time. It was just happenstance. People like their fantasies. Kuper certainly has his.

Peter B
Peter B
1 year ago
Reply to  Paul Rogers

I was a Cambridge engineer. It slightly pains me to be defending Oxford here, but sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and do the right thing !
There’s a massive difference between the work schedule, culture and lifestyle of – for example – engineering students and some of the humanities subjects.
Plenty of “normal” students went to the Cambridge Union (cheap films, interesting speakers, surprisingly good value). That was not exclusive. Getting on the committee probably was.
If you had enough self-confidence (and not all state school pupils do) and ability, I don’t think the public school cliques needed to bother you too much – they certainly wouldn’t waste any time socialising with you. It’s really down to you if you let this sort of thing upset you.

Eamonn Toland
Eamonn Toland
1 year ago
Reply to  Peter B

Speaking as an Oxford Humanities alumnus (History & Economics 88-91) I have to say my main interaction with the Union involved a Rocky Horror party and some vile-but-free Ginger Wine cocktails, although I was present when a teenage Jacob Rees-Mogg was sarcastically described as having the gravitas of a 55-year-old in one of his first speeches…..

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
1 year ago
Reply to  Paul Rogers

My husband won a scholarship to Cambridge to study natural sciences (physics in his case) and he told me that really the work load was so high that there wasn’t time to be involved in things like the Union or much else there.

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
1 year ago

Absolutely right. You had to decide which lectures to skive and cadge notes on if you actually wanted to play any sport at Cambridge doing NatSci. There was no timetable of ‘Wednesday afternoons and Saturdays allocated to sport’. And terms were two weeks shorter than all competitor institutions, so you had to complete a more rigorous syllabus in 20% less time.
The way terms were organised there was an absolute disgrace: all about Arts Dons wanting long holidays to b****r off for four months ‘doing research’.

Matt M
Matt M
1 year ago

Surely if Kuper is right and Oxford did cause Brexit then it is responsible for fulfilling the will of the people to leave the EU and ensuring parliamentary sovereignty rather than rule by unelected foreign bureaucrats.
So Oxford is actually a force for democracy.
I suspect what Kuper actually dislikes is the common man.

Last edited 1 year ago by Matt M
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Matt M

Ye it was people like Kuper who took us into the EU (or EEC) against the will of the British people because they knew better and it was their birth right

Last edited 1 year ago by Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Andrew Langridge
Andrew Langridge
1 year ago
Reply to  Matt M

Try telling the French and Germans that they don’t have any sovereignty and they’ll laugh in your face. Britain failed to make the most of being in the EU due to it’s inflated sense of entitlement.

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago

I don’t know why but I barely registered Will Lloyd’s articles for my first year or so on Unherd. He seems to have come into his own in recent months. Clever, cutting writing. I assume he attended Oxford.
Don’t bother bulldozing all those pretty Oxford buildings with heavy machinery that generates greenhouse gases. Just give the CRT-mongers free reign to “deconstruct” science and all things useful, and soon all that will be left is a beautiful corpse.

Bill W
Bill W
1 year ago

I was at Oxford University in the 80s and the posh politically inclined people I met were anti Thatcher and pro SDP if not Labour. Very few members of my college were members of the Oxford Union, from memory mainly Etonians. Most of the undergrads seemed if not apolitical, not particularly fond of (student) party politics.

Last edited 1 year ago by Bill W
Jeff Carr
Jeff Carr
1 year ago

Simon Kuper is so self-centred that he believes some group in the Establishment must be responsible for Brexit.
If he climbed down from his ivory tower and spent some time on the doorsteps of towns lIke Wigan, Leigh and Wakefield he would realise that it is the self-employed artisans and semi-skilled working classes that voted across party lines for Brexit. Not the readers of the FT, Guardian or Times but readers of the Mirror, Sun, Mail and Express. The great unwashed not some small elite group at Oxford.

Dustshoe Richinrut
Dustshoe Richinrut
1 year ago

I like Laurel and Hardy’s 1939 feature length A Chump At Oxford. The two of them were completely fish out of water as soon as they arrived at their halls. Except when Stan got a bump to his head and rediscovered his old self: the world famous don Lord Paddington. It was quite clear, however, that Stan had more in common with Americans, like his pal Ollie, than with his fellow Englishmen harassing the living daylights out of him at Oxford.

Mark Gourley
Mark Gourley
1 year ago

Been there, done that, got the white tie. Curiously, I believe a contemporary of mine was one Anthony Blair of St John’s College who played no visible part In undergraduate political games. I wonder what happened to him?

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
1 year ago

Brexit was caused primarily by the London-Centric New Labour party betraying its core voters in the Midlands and the North.
That’s who voted in droves for Brexit.

ARNAUD ALMARIC
ARNAUD ALMARIC
1 year ago

What tragedy did Edward St Aubyn endure?

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
1 year ago
Reply to  ARNAUD ALMARIC

Read his (very well written) books!

ARNAUD ALMARIC
ARNAUD ALMARIC
1 year ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

Thanks.

17.06 BST.

Last edited 1 year ago by ARNAUD ALMARIC
ARNAUD ALMARIC
ARNAUD ALMARIC
1 year ago
Reply to  JR Stoker

I’ve taken a short cut via Amazon Reviews and consulted my Chief of Staff.
Frankly I don’t believe it! But it is very easy to slander the dead. I find the idea that he was sodomised by his father (a former Cavalry Officer) simply staggering.

22.15 BST.

Last edited 1 year ago by ARNAUD ALMARIC
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  ARNAUD ALMARIC

Blair?

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
1 year ago

No, St Aubyn – very bleak, but also very witty books. You need to space them out with something a bit more light-hearted – the Flashman books would be perfect.

Things and thoughts. Things and thoughts.
Things and thoughts. Things and thoughts.
1 year ago

Other than Dan Hannan, who is approvingly compared to the steely early Bolsheviks, Kuper does not think much of his Oxford Tory Brexiteers.

Crikey,