Is the British electorate falling out of love with Boris Johnson, the man they seemed to think was such a laugh? There has been a little flurry of soul-searching articles and books about public schoolboys, including Richard Beard’s excellent article Why public schoolboys like me and Boris Johnson aren’t fit to run our country, and this interview with Musa Okwonga who says Boys don’t learn shamelessness at Eton, it is where they perfect it .
What’s a public schoolboy? A boy who’s currently at, or a man who is a product of, one of England’s Great Nine public schools (boarding schools Eton, Charterhouse, Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Westminster, and Winchester and day schools St Paul’s and Merchant Taylor’s), or, rather confusingly, one of the schools in the less easily defined group of “minor public schools”, like Richard Beard who went to Radley College. I probably don’t need to point out that none of these schools are public in any meaningful sense of the word; they are highly selective and reassuringly expensive.
For a flavour of how the products of the "minor public schools” feel about the Great Nine, and more particularly about Eton, read James Delingpole thanking God he doesn’t have that ghastly sense of entitlement that Eton instils. Note that Delingpole was happy to send “Girl” (who I assume must be his daughter?) to Malvern College, his own minor public school alma mater, but he sent his son Ivo (apparently sons are allowed to be named in public, unlike daughters) to Eton and was proud to come out as an Eton parent. Forgive me for disappearing briefly into a Delingpole rabbit hole, but you might also be interested to read Ivo’s encomium to Eton; an instructive companion piece to Richard Beard’s article. Ivo says “With only one in five getting an offer (odds stiffer than Oxbridge), and after five years of being expected to perform at the highest level, it’s unsurprising that students end up so successful.” Well, it could be that, Ivo, or it could be that these students are almost all from wealthy and well-connected families. (Incidentally, Ivo is wrong about the odds of getting into Oxbridge, which are around 17%, definitely less than the 20% chance of getting into Eton.)
It should be said that even being a product of one of the other Great Nines won’t protect you from Etonian sneering. George Osborne (St Paul’s), a contemporary of David Cameron’s at Oxford and a member of his Cabinet from 2010 to 2016) was given the nickname “Oik” by his fellow Bullingdon Club members. Opinion differs about the origin of the nickname - was it because his family’s money was made as recently as the 1960s by his father’s successful wallpaper firm Osborne & Little (money should be inherited - a fortune made recently “in trade” is more embarrassing than no fortune at all) - or because he’d had the misfortune to go to St Paul’s as a day boy?
The 1864 Clarendon Report describe the nine schools, and the young men they produced, in the following glowing terms.
It is not easy to estimate the degree in which the English people are indebted to these schools for the qualities on which they pique themselves most - for their capacity to govern others and control themselves, their aptitude for combining freedom with order, their public spirit, their vigour and manliness of character, their strong but not slavish respect for public opinion, their love of healthy sports and exercise. These schools have been the chief nurseries of our statesmen; in them, and in schools modelled after them, men of all the various classes that make up English society, destined for every profession and career, have been brought up on a footing of social equality, and have contracted the most enduring friendships, and some of the ruling habits, of their lives; and they have had perhaps the largest share in moulding the character of an English gentleman.
It seems to me that the British, or more accurately the English and to a lesser extent the Scots, have been groomed over the last three centuries to accept that men who have been to public school are leaders, and that leaders are men who have been to public school. If we agree that Etonian Horace Walpole, who took office in 1721, was the first British Prime Minister, then Boris Johnson (Prime Minister 55) is the twentieth Etonian to hold this office. The only other Great Nines to come close are Harrow, with seven PMs (of whom the most recent was Winston Churchill) and Westminster, with six. Four of the other schools have produced a single PM each. Poor show, Merchant Taylor’s and Shrewsbury, who have produced no PMs at all.
Do we really believe that the boys who go to a group of nine schools are so uniquely gifted that it’s natural justice that 37 out of 55 British PMs have been drawn from their ranks, with 20 of them emerging from just one school? Well, it seems that we do, at some level, believe this, and it’s hardly surprising that we feel this way. A study commissioned by the Sutton Trust and the Social Mobility Commission in 2019 called its final report Elitist Britain, having found that the people holding the top jobs in politics, the judiciary, media, business, and even most professional sport (with the exception of football, axiomatically “a gentleman’s game played by hooligans”), are five times more likely to have been to privately educated than the general population. Of course, “privately educated” encompasses not only the Great Nine and the minor public schools, but also the plethora of fee-paying schools so minor they don’t qualify as public schools at all, and have to be content with being private schools.
An earlier Sutton Trust survey conducted in 2006, focusing specifically on the media, found that “54% of the top 100 newspaper editors, columnists, broadcasters and executives were educated privately, despite fee-paying schools catering for 7% of the school population”. The 2019 Elitist Britain report was quoted by industry magazine Press Gazette “found that 43 per cent of the UK’s 100 most influential editors and broadcasters, as per its News Media 100 list, went to private school”. Given that public schoolboys (and to a lesser extent, their female counterparts) run the UK media, it is hardly surprising that the population of the UK is inclined favourably towards them.
An excellent 2013 New Statesman piece by Jason Cowley “Eton eternal: How one school came to dominate public life” is a snapshot of Etonian influence at the time.
“It is frequently noted but worth repeating that the Prime Minister, the Mayor of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury are all Etonians. The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, went to Westminster School and the Chancellor, George Osborne, went to St Paul’s in London; but Osborne’s chief economics adviser, Rupert Harrison, is a former head boy at Eton. Cameron’s chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, is an Etonian. The Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin is an Etonian. The Chief Whip, George Young, is an Etonian. Several of the political editors who interview these politicians and report on their work are Old Etonians: James Landale (the BBC), Tom Newton Dunn (the Sun), Patrick Hennessy (the Telegraph), Roland Watson (the Times). And so it goes on. A small world indeed.”
Those political editors are all still active. James Landale is now the diplomatic correspondent at the BBC; Tom Newton Dunn is chief political commentator at Times Radio; Patrick Hennessy is Director of Communications for Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London; Roland Watson is foreign editor at the Times. Geordie Greig, editor of the Daily Mail since 2018, and editor of the Mail on Sunday from 2012 to 2018, is an Etonian - the Daily Mail, is after the Sun, the most widely read British newspaper.
Why does it matter that we’ve been groomed to accept what these men say, so unquestioningly? Because they don’t actually think the rest of us matter. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they don’t think we’re human, but they definitely don’t think we matter. When I started at Oxford in 1983, I met lots of public schoolboys. In my first week, I asked another new student if he was going to a welcome event that our college was hosting. “No,” he said, “I’m meeting some chaps from school that night.” I didn’t know anybody at Oxford - he already had all the networks he would ever need. He did at least have the grace to look slightly embarrassed, but that would have been because he was a Harrovian rather than an Etonian.