Events | 2009.11.06
Why public schools are likely to rule in 2010
With half of David Cameron\'s \'A list\' candidates independently educated, influential Tories are calling for greater diversity
Since David Cameron became Tory leader, a key part of his mission has been to make the Conservative party far more representative of the country it wants to govern. Soon after winning the leadership contest in 2005, he said he wanted to attract candidates from a diverse range of backgrounds "to inform everything we do, to give us the benefit of their diverse experience, to ensure that we stay in touch with the reality of life in Britain today".
Thus far, however, the leadership has concentrated on aspects of diversity that lie outside candidates\' socio-economic and educational backgrounds. In these areas, they have had limited success, with the result that the general election of 2010 is likely to see the House of Commons\' biggest influx of privately educated MPs in a generation.
At the last count, 52% of the Conservatives\' so-called "A-list" of prospective candidates had been privately educated.Among likely new Tory MPs whose education is a matter of record, 43% went to independent schools. Among the same group, only 36% would have gone to comprehensives, compared with 88% of the population at large.
All this feeds into one striking statistic. After next year\'s election about a third of all new MPs will have been to fee-paying schools, compared with 13% of new arrivals when the Commons last underwent major change in 1997.
Most of this data is to be found in The Class of 2010, a report put together by the lobbying firm the Madano Partnership, based on work by academics from Plymouth University. The research suggests that relative to 1997, the number of new MPs from comprehensive schools will fall from 46% to about 30%; and that 17% of the new intake will come from grammar schools, despite only 5% of pupils attending such schools.
The report\'s authors talk about "a massive shift over the last 12 years towards the private and independent sector", and also note that the share of new Labour MPs from private school backgrounds may double, from 7% in 1997 to 14%.
They conclude: "There has been a marked increase in the number of winnable [seat] candidates who were educated at private or independent school, perhaps by as much as three times the 1997 figure."
Some influential Tories are pushing their leaders to take action. Tim Montgomerie, who runs the activist website ConservativeHome, said: "They\'ve only ever really concentrated on the gender split, and the ethnic minority split. I don\'t argue that those things aren\'t important, but it\'s also important to do more to get people from lower income and public sector backgrounds."
Montgomerie and colleagues have lobbied senior Tories to give organised help to aspiring MPs with limited incomes, but have so far been unsuccessful. "We did an analysis of how much it costs to be a candidate," he said, "and it came it at something like £40,000. So there\'s a huge financial hurdle for people to get over if they\'re considering being a Conservative candidate. We put all that to the party – that it was something they needed to think about. They said they were looking at it. It\'s a hard thing to address, but I don\'t think they ever have."
The columnist and historian of the Tories, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, talks about a general "recovery" in the profile of privately educated public figures. "There has been, to some extent, a comeback of the kind of old guard that were predominant in the Tory party 40 years ago," he said. "But what has completely changed is this: I was looking at an old photograph of Anthony Eden the other day, and he was wearing an Old Etonian tie. Can you imagine any Tory MP today wearing one? It\'s absolutely inconceivable. They\'re all slightly and awkward and bashful about it."
To be fair to the Conservatives, the proportion of their sitting MPs who went to fee-paying establishments peaked in 1966 – at 81% – and has been coming down ever since, to a current figure of 59%. In the Labour party, an altogether smaller figure has held steady: after the elections of 1959 and 2005, 18% of the party\'s MPs came from private-school backgrounds, though at the next election the proportion of new Labour MPs from the independent sector looks set to jump. In 1997, it stood at 7%, whereas next year, it could double.
For the Tories, the likely social profile of the next government also highlights a break with their own past: though Iain Duncan Smith was privately educated, Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, William Hague and Michael Howard were all products of the state system. The arrival in power of Cameron and his circle will be heralded as a return to more well-heeled Tory stereotypes. In that context, the arrival of so many privately educated newcomers will be of a piece with the general mood. Politics will feel much posher.
The Madano Partnership profiled 242 of the likely next parliamentary generation, and focused on the Conservative candidates who will have to make it to the Commons if the party is to win a majority. There is a smattering of Old Etonians, including millionaire campaigner Zac Goldsmith, Tory intellectual Jesse Norman, and Rory Stewart, once a tutor to princes William and Harry. The ranks will also include at least two alumni of Harrow, and three from Radley College, along with old boys and girls from Highgate, Millfield, Winchester, Charterhouse, Stowe and Roedean.
There is also a dynastic factor. Among the likely Tory intake will be Benedict Gummer, son of the ex-cabinet minister John Selwyn Gummer, and an alumnus of Tonbridge school, and the Thatcher-era minister Peter Walker\'s son Robin – like George Osborne, an old boy of St Paul\'s. The Tories are also likely to take the neighbouring constituencies of Somerton and Frome and Somerset North East, whose MPs will be Annunziata and Jacob Rees-Mogg, children of former Times editor and life peer William Rees-Mogg. Jacob went to Eton; when I tried to identify Annunziata\'s alma mater via the Tory press office, it said it was unable to contact her, which chimes with Wheatcroft\'s suggestion of many Tories\' coyness about their education. Montgomerie won\'t be drawn on specific candidates, but he expresses concern about the Conservatives\' apparent sociological blindspots .
"When Cameron said he wanted a Conservative parliamentary party that looked more like Britain, that was good," he said. "But I had a discussion with a shadow cabinet minister the other day, who was berating me for my opposition to all-women shortlists. I said to him, \'OK – tell me what the percentage is of people who\'ve been selected who have a public sector background.\' He didn\'t know the answer.
"I said, \'How many of them come from state schools?\' He didn\'t know that either. They only know the figures for women and ethnic minorities. It\'s too superficial."
Those who make it their business to look at parliament\'s composition from a broad, non-partisan perspective are worried about what the 2010 intake will say about social mobility. Dr Lee Elliott Major, research director of the Sutton Trust, which campaigns to increase opportunity for non-privileged children, said: "Our big fear is that the golden generation who managed to be socially mobile in the post-war period are going to turn out to be a blip, and in terms of the domination of a lot of public life, things are now moving in the opposite direction."
One of the biggest problems, he suggests, is the well-established rituals and practices that are in danger of fencing Westminster off for people of modest means. "If you look at the people going into politics, internships and low-paid research jobs are now a pre-requisite for making any progress," he says. "As far as I know, that applies to David Cameron, for example, as well as many current members of the Labour cabinet. And inevitably, it cuts out people from less advantaged backgrounds.
"It remains a scandal that unpaid internships are still tolerated in parliament, because they represent an unjustified and easily removed barrier to social mobility."
Among independently educated Tories themselves, the idea that their backgrounds have any political relevance gets short shrift, as proved by the views of Louise Bagshawe, the novelist turned Conservative hopeful. With assistance from scholarship schemes, she went to Woldingham school, an independent Catholic establishment in Surrey just inside the M25 – and she now seems almost certain to take the Northamptonshire seat of Corby.
"All these charges have been laid at David Cameron since day one: that he went to Eton, he can\'t possibly be in touch with the people," she said. "But you can see from the polls what people think of that line of argument. Fighting on the basis of people\'s backgrounds is something that the average voter just isn\'t interested in."
Asked what has so slowed social mobility, she talks about Labour failure, "dumbing down and grade inflation" in comprehensives, and enthuses about Conservative plans for school reform, which brings one inescapable conclusion: if the proposals eventually work, won\'t there be fewer privately educated people in parliament?
"You would think so," she said. "You\'ll see people from a more diverse range of social backgrounds. The schools system under Labour has failed. And we can do better."
Out with old ...
As embodiments of the newly upmarket face of British politics, Tory hopefuls Jacob and Annunziata Rees-Mogg, take some beating.The son and daughter of life peer and ex-Times editor William Rees-Mogg are standing in neighbouring West Country seats: Jacob in the new constituency of Somerset North East, and Annunziata in Somerton and Frome. If both win they would become the first brother and sister to sit in the Commons. Annunziata, 30, claims to have joined the Tory party aged five. In 2006 Jacob, 40, who went to Eton and Trinity, Oxford ran into controversy on Newsnight. When told 52% of his party\'s A-list were privately educated, he said: "When it\'s elected the Tory party has to be able to form a government, and it\'s not going to be able to form a government if it has potted plants as candidates … to make up quotas." Inevitably, his words were interpreted as a slur on people from state schools, though a friend of Rees Mogg\'s attempted to defend him as follows. "Jacob\'s words were taken out of context and misrepresented. But as a politician, what did he expect? You\'ll find that he\'s the first to admit he is not an expert media performer."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/[...]conservatives-education-policy
