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

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David Cameron, on the other hand, studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) – which still didn’t alert this keen Remainer to the fact that calling a Referendum on the EU was his fatal mistake. Kuper, one senses, finds this millieu troublingly homoerotic. He uses the word “camp” to describe their style at least three times.

As Kuper writes, the British Tory government has been - and is - run by a coterie of privileged individuals many of whom consider politics to be no more than good sport. For them political office promises a continuation of the inconsequential blah-blahs they had in debating societies while at Eton and, later, at Oxford University. It allows them to display their rhetorical skills while pretending to run a country. Rhetorically engaging, fantastically written, and well researched. This book has all the hot gossip from Oxford in the 1980s, exploring how that generation of graduates was shaped, and how they are now shaping Britain. Cherwell Magazine serves as the diary for the Tories who now dominate British politics, and the Oxford debating club as a kind of lyceum for our current era. It is here we see the making of modern Britain in the post-Thatcher era. Johnson’s gift turned out to be for winning office, not doing anything with it. He didn’t make much of his presidency, recalls Tim Hames, a union politician of the time: “The thing was a shambles. He couldn’t organise a term card to save his life. He didn’t have the sort of support mechanism that he realised in later life that he required.” I don’t know what I expected about a book called Chums, focused on the British political elite, their time at Oxbridge, and a look into how the establishment cemented - and continues to influence - the governmental structure we see today. Kuper simply seethes that he wasn’t part of the inner group who landed in Oxford well connected from school and eased seamlessly into top positions in government. This bitter and twistedness detrimentally affects his judgement and the writing.Secrecy came naturally to John le Carré, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep, nowhere more so than in his private life. Seemingly content in his marriage, the novelist conducted a string of love affairs over four decades. 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. Deng, Yii-Jeng (21 May 2022). "Book Review: Chums by Simon Kuper". The Oxford Student (Oxford's University's Student Newspaper). I enjoyed this book, perhaps because it supports many of the beliefs I have about mediocrity of the entitled Eton-Oxford crowd (exemplified by Boris Johnson) who so badly govern the lives of ordinary British people. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. He publishes a well-read column in the weekend edition FT Magazine [2] and has twice been awarded the British Society of Magazine Editors' prize for Columnist of the Year. [3] [4] Kuper has also written for outlets such as The Guardian and The Times. [5]

Cameron, like many of his colleagues, had honed his public speaking and debating skills in the Oxford Union, of which Boris Johnson was once president. At university, the latter “turned self-parody into a form of self-promotion… [He] merged three archetypes from British popular culture: Brideshead, Wooster and the boarding-school bounder. The bounder is the rogue of his school, who doesn’t do his ‘prep’, smokes behind the rugger field, breaks bounds, romances girls and is always getting into ‘scrapes’. In adulthood, bounders traditionally end up hiding from their creditors in Australia.” Simon Kuper". Expert Keynote and Motivational Speakers | Chartwell Speakers . Retrieved 2 July 2023. Norton-Taylor, Richard (20 March 2021). "The Happy Traitor by Simon Kuper review – the extraordinary story of George Blake". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 2 July 2023.I found this to be an interesting little book. It looks at the core of the Chumocracy - how the ruling caste went to school with each other, went to university with each other, married each other, and are sending their children on the same trajectory to perpetuate themselves. I think that I knew this already, but the book provides an interesting data point. I’ve been meaning to read Chumsfor months; ever since its release, friend after friend recommended the book to me, one buying it for my birthday leaving the note, ‘Just to be clear, it’s not a “how to” guide’.