Friday, 11 December 2009

Class War? Now it's the Tories who dissemble

David "Dave" Cameron and other senior members of the shadow Cabinet are keeping quiet about their public school backgrounds on the official Conservative Party website.

Only three of the 17 Tory shadow ministers who went to private school disclose their educational backgrounds in their official biographies. Although you have to feel sorry for Andrew Mitchell who went to Rugby.

It puts me in mind of a passage in a Dorothy L. Sayers book where a there's a wonderful put-down about private schools, something like, "Rugby? No no, that's a railway junction!"

Douglas Hurd, famously refused to stand for the leadership of the Tory party when Mrs. Thatcher resigned because he felt that his Old Etonian background would not chime with voter sensibilities. How strange that a dozen years of a Labour government has made the electorate seemingly indifferent to unearned wealth and inherited privilege.

Curiously, 14 of the 15 shadow ministers who went to a comp or grammar school prominently boast of the fact.

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