Bullingdon Club

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Content Provider: Selected Short Prose Pieces, 2011–2016 by Stewart Lee

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Boris Johnson, Bullingdon Club, call centre, centre right, David Attenborough, Etonian, gentrification, James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, Livingstone, I presume, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, pre–internet, Right to Buy, Robert Gordon, Russell Brand, Saturday Night Live, sensible shoes, Socratic dialogue, Stephen Fry, trickle-down economics, wage slave, young professional

Directives from Westminster seem more irrelevant to we Scots than ever, now that the Cabinet is essentially an elitist cabal run by former members of the exclusive, window-smashing dining society, the Bullingdon Club. And none of them is Scottish either, apart from the bad-news patsy Danny Alexander and the eel-faced Trot fantasist and yacht fancier Michael Gove, who is adopted anyway, and could have ended up being raised anywhere in the UK, and so cannot make any especial claims for being anything but an orphan with a grudge. But what the Scots must understand is that the Bullingdon Club Cabinet has as little in common with the average English person as it does with the average Scot. If 5.5 million largely non-Conservative-voting Scots sever their links with us, there are 5.5 million fewer of us to say no to Bullingdon Club rule.

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Contents Title Page Dedication Introduction Stewart Lee’s insider’s take on William and Kate My perfect pub The National Trust doesn’t even trust us to have our own thoughts If Damon Albarn is serious about the occult, shouldn’t we call him Damien? What a tragic wasted opportunity to present a true portrait of the Iron Lady Shame on you, Alex Salmond, for selling us out to the Bullingdon Club I was getting on so well with Gillian Welch. Then David Cameron butts in How I was busted by the O—— Advertisement Enforcement Office Movements afoot to return Tony Blair to Labour’s seat of power? This truly was an event that regenerated a community, but what of its legacy? Brooks and Cameron’s texts?

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Only two Tory generations ago, the prime minister Margaret Thatcher was proud to proclaim herself “a grocer’s daughter”. A mere twenty years since she passed power on to John Major, a garden-gnome salesman with six O-levels, it is impossible to imagine either in government today, composed, as it is, principally of former members of the elite Oxford vomiting society the Bullingdon Club. The state-schools system is stretched to the limit; the withdrawal of further education grants deters poorer students; and government contributions to the Bookstart scheme, which gives books to children who might otherwise have none, have been halved. It is not possible to imagine a Thatcher ever getting out of Lincolnshire today, let alone becoming prime minister.

Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain by Robert Verkaik

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alistair Cooke, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Brixton riot, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, data science, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, G4S, gender pay gap, God and Mammon, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Livingstone, I presume, loadsamoney, mega-rich, Neil Kinnock, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, Piers Corbyn, place-making, plutocrats, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, school vouchers, Stephen Fry, Steve Bannon, Suez crisis 1956, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, trade route, traveling salesman, unpaid internship

1 Greg Hurst, The Times, 1 September 2016. 2 http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/96686.htm 3 http://everyday-saints.com/13.htm 4 The Times, 1 September 2016. 5 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/8757576/David-Cameron-tells-Russian-hosts-KGB-tried-to-recruit-me-but-I-failed-the-test.html 6 @MichaelLCrick, Twitter, 7 September 2107. 7 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers-david-cameron-father-tax-bahamas 8 The Times obituary, 9 December 1930. 9 Francis Elliott and James Hanning, Cameron: Practically a Conservative (London: Fourth Estate, 2012), p. 369. 10 Michael Ashcroft and Isobel Oakeshott, Call Me Dave: The Unauthorised Biography (London: Biteback Publishing, 2015), p. 17. 11 Ashcroft and Oakeshott, p. 17. 12 http://www.financemagnates.com/executives/moves/exclusive-broctagon-solutions-onboards-peter-romilly-as-chief-operating-officer/ 13 https://relationshipscience.com/edward-g-mallinckrodt-p3617968 14 https://www.1843magazine.com/features/eton-and-the-making-of-a-modern-elite 15 Ashcroft and Oakeshott, p. 32. 16 http://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/235077/A-very-exclusive-club-called-pop 17 Ashcroft and Oakeshott, p. 37; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1542289/Cameron-the-bad-boy-of-Eton-who-wouldnt-split-on-druggy-friend.htm 18 http://d56ddea33f0f1bf171c7-0d3b9304851da04b7a689f475e7e240f.r47.cf2.rackcdn.com/850215%20Eton%20College%20Chronicle%20iv%20THCR%201-3-15%20f85.pdf 19 Evening Standard, 7 April 2008. 20 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2572544/Files-Britain-NOT-support-military-action-against-Russia.html 21 www.etoncollege.com/TheOEA.aspx 22 https://development.mtsn.org.uk/city-network---september-2016 23 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/sep/02/bullingdon-club-david-cameron-riots 24 Ashcroft and Oakeshott, p. 73. 25 Mail on Sunday, 18 March 2007; Ashcroft and Oakeshott, p. 79. 26 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10377728/Clubland-were-all-members-now.html 27 Ashcroft and Oakeshott, p. 80. 28 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/sep/02/bullingdon-club-david-cameron-riots; Ashcroft and Oakeshott, p. 111. 29 Ashcroft and Oakeshott, p. 198. 30 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3461103/The-torture-watching-husband-choose-beliefs-old-friend-PM-Daily-Mail-columnist-SARAH-VINE-s-intensely-personal-account-momentous-decision.html 31 Michael Green was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School, in Elstree, Hertfordshire on a scholarship and left, aged seventeen, with four O-levels.

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I said that what we wanted to do at Eton was to produce men who would hold independent views and be prepared to stick up for them, not men who would take an “Etonian” line.’10 Seven years later, another Conservative administration suffered a similar fate in 1963 when a privately educated politician lied to parliament about his personal life. John Profumo (Harrow), a leading member of Oxford University’s exclusive Bullingdon Club, enjoyed an active sex life outside his marriage. One of his lovers was the model Christine Keeler, who had also begun an affair with a Russian naval attaché. At the time, Profumo was secretary of state for war and the potential threat to national security was obvious. When Profumo was confronted about the allegations in parliament he denied the story.

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Cameron showed little interest in politics at Oxford but he did throw himself into the traditional public displays of privilege, joining the Bullingdon and Piers Gaveston clubs whose memberships are exclusively taken from the public schools, especially Eton. The rituals, which include smashing up restaurants and running riot through the city streets, are largely based on the behaviour of the pupil-run societies that dominated the ungoverned public schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today, it is said that a prospective Bullingdon Club member must burn a fifty pound note in front of a homeless person. Hooliganism and vandalism are part of the club’s raison d’être. In 1894, after dinner, Bullingdon members smashed the lights and 468 windows in Peckwater Quad of Christ Church, along with the blinds and doors of the building.

Rule Britannia: Brexit and the End of Empire by Danny Dorling, Sally Tomlinson

3D printing, Ada Lovelace, Alfred Russel Wallace, anti-communist, anti-globalists, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, colonial rule, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Etonian, falling living standards, Flynn Effect, gentrification, housing crisis, illegal immigration, imperial preference, income inequality, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, knowledge economy, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megacity, New Urbanism, Nick Leeson, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, out of africa, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, University of East Anglia, Wayback Machine, We are the 99%, wealth creators

, The Conversation, 29 November, http://theconversation.com/life-expectancy-in-britain-has-fallen-so-much-that-a-million-years-of-life-could-disappear-by-2058-why-88063 8 BBC (2018) ‘The English question: Young are less proud to be English’, BBC News, 3 June, poll carried out across England, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-44142843 9 BBC (2018) ibid. 10 This poem by Rudyard Kipling was originally written for the Diamond Jubilee celebration of Queen Victoria, but was rewritten to support American colonisation. 11 Jacobson, D. (2007) ‘Kipling in South Africa’, London Review of Books, Vol. 29, No. 11, 7 June, https://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n11/dan-jacobson/kipling-in-south-africa 12 Linstrum, E. (2017) ‘The empire dreamt back: To help rule its empire, Britain turned to psychoanalysis. But they weren’t willing to hear the truth it told’, Aeon magazine, 4 December, https://aeon.co/essays/britains-imperial-dream-catchers-and-the-truths-of-empire 13 James, M. (2014) ‘Cecil Rhodes and the Bullingdon Club’, Rhodes Bishop’s Stortford Museum News, 15 April, http://www.rhodesbishopsstortford.org.uk/museum-news/cecil-rhodes-and-the-bullingdon-club/ 14 Brendon, P. (2007) The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781–1997, London: Vintage. 15 Gilbert, M. (1997) A History of the Twentieth Century: Volume One, 1900–1933, New York: William Morrow and Company, p. 11. 16 Hughes, G. (2010) ‘South Africa and the British concentration camps’, 16 June, https://christhum.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/south-africa-and-the-british-concentration-camps/ 17 Moran, C. (2012) Moranthology, London: HarperCollins, in which David Cameron is said to resemble a slightly camp gammon robot, a C3PO made of ham. 18 John Bull locking the door to immigrants.

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While the British Empire is long gone, we are still living through its legacy today. Without a clear understanding of what the Empire was about, we cannot properly understand ourselves today. So, let’s take a little time to remember Cecil Rhodes with more honesty than most do. After spending only one term at Oriel College in Oxford, where he enlisted in the Bullingdon Club,13 Rhodes, aged twenty, joined the white man’s rush to exploit gold and diamonds. He acquired the huge open-cast mine at Kimberley. There, he would apparently spend hours gazing into the pit where ‘thousands of naked Africans filled one-ton iron ore buckets with blue earth’.14 These were the ‘new-caught, sullen peoples, half devil and half child’ as described in Kipling’s poem.

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His wife’s worth, like his, had come from property bought with monies they inherited from wealthy parents, who in turn had benefited from relatives, who had, for example, made great gains from slavery within the British Empire.60 In 2012, the Telegraph newspaper reported that the property holdings of the Cameron family meant that ‘the analysis also forecast that the combined wealth of Mr and Mrs Cameron was likely to rise sharply in coming years because they would inherit an estimated £25.3 million’. David was educated at Heatherdown, a private preparatory school where Prince Andrew (the Duke of York) and Prince Edward (the Earl of Wessex) were also pupils. From there, David went to Eton and then on to Brasenose College, Oxford. There, he studied PPE, but also belonged to the Bullingdon Club (Figure 7.2), which was supposedly founded as a sporting club for wealthy men in 1780. The club is now known for ostentatious spending, boisterous rituals and trashing restaurants – getting away with it by paying off the owners not to involve the police. Lord Ashcroft (of whom more later) co-wrote a book repeating rumours that David reportedly placed a portion of his anatomy in a dead pig’s head on one particularly rumbustious evening at the equally notorious Piers Gaveston dining society.

No Such Thing as Society by Andy McSmith

"there is no alternative" (TINA), anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Brixton riot, Bullingdon Club, call centre, cuban missile crisis, Etonian, F. W. de Klerk, Farzad Bazoft, feminist movement, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, full employment, glass ceiling, God and Mammon, greed is good, illegal immigration, index card, John Bercow, Kickstarter, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Live Aid, loadsamoney, long peace, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, mortgage debt, mutually assured destruction, negative equity, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, old-boy network, popular capitalism, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Sloane Ranger, South Sea Bubble, spread of share-ownership, Stephen Fry, strikebreaker, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban decay, Winter of Discontent, young professional

Their tailcoats alone cost £1,000 at 1984 prices, and their alcohol-fuelled dinners at Oxford’s finest restaurants cost about £400 a time.38 Dinner of en ended with high jinks, in which these privileged kids displayed their indifference to law and order. Cameron went to bed early on the night that the police were called after members of the Bullingdon Club had thrown a pot plant through the plate-glass window of a restaurant, so was not involved. Johnson ran from the scene fast enough to avoid arrest.39 After the old Bullingdon Club photograph was uncovered, the local firm that owned the copyright withdrew permission for it to be used again, which did not stop it being pirated across the internet and in leaf ets distributed during the 2010 election.

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The pictures captured the attention of Tina Brown, editor of Tatler, and inspired waves of students to ape this behaviour. Jones said in a recent interview: ‘I had access to what felt like a secret world. There was a change going on. Someone described it as a “last hurrah” of the upper classes.’34 One of the stars of this new firmament was Darius Guppy, an old Etonian who helped revive the Bullingdon Club, whose antics had been recounted in Waugh’s novels. Guppy later went to jail for fraud. Another was Count Gottfried von Bismarck, a descendant of Prussia’s Iron Chancellor, who liked to dress up in lederhosen or in women’s clothes, lipstick and fishnet stockings. An Oxford contemporary, Toby Young, recalled: It was as though Oxford – and no doubt the same was true of Cambridge – was a stage and people like Gottfried von Bismarck and Darius Guppy were the theatrical stars we had all come to see.

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Her grandfather, Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, her grandmother Honor Guinness and her father had each in turn been Tory MP for Southend West; Paul Channon had been promoted into Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet as secretary of state for trade and industry just two months before losing his daughter. Years later, two journalists researching the life of David Cameron came upon a photograph of the members of the Bullingdon Club, which Cameron had joined, for the academic year 1986–7. The photograph showed ten supremely confident young men posing in their navy-blue tailcoats, with white silk facings and gold buttons, and mustard waistcoats. Sitting on a step at the front was twenty-two-year-old Boris Johnson and standing languidly at the back, like the prince of all he surveyed, was David Cameron, aged nineteen or twenty.37 These ‘Buller’ lads needed funds way beyond the reach of most people of their age.

Small Men on the Wrong Side of History: The Decline, Fall and Unlikely Return of Conservatism by Ed West

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, assortative mating, battle of ideas, Beeching cuts, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Bullingdon Club, centre right, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Corn Laws, David Attenborough, David Brooks, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, desegregation, different worldview, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Etonian, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, future of work, gender pay gap, George Santayana, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, Jeremy Corbyn, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lump of labour, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, moral hazard, moral panic, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, Norman Mailer, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, pattern recognition, Ralph Nader, replication crisis, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Scientific racism, Social Justice Warrior, Stephen Fry, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, Thomas Malthus, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing test, twin studies, urban decay, War on Poverty, Winter of Discontent, zero-sum game

It’s impossible to discuss this subject without sounding like one of those old people who used to write to the Daily Telegraph complaining that the word ‘gay’ had been hijacked by homosexualists. But many terms have come to change either their meaning or their tone. ‘Elitism’, once a good thing, now usually implies discrimination by the wealthy, privileged and unfairly advantaged. It makes you think of the Bullingdon Club or Draco Malfoy or whatever, and journalists even go on about elitism when politics is full of Oxbridge graduates, even though Oxford and Cambridge are literally the best universities in Britain. After all, we generally like the best people to be in charge of most things; we’d prefer if the guy flying our plane had gone to whatever is the flight-school equivalent of Oxbridge.

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Even though I was still earning peanuts, and had no financial incentives to reduce tax, the amount of money being spent just struck me as reckless. Yet despite this many were reluctant to go with the Conservatives, whose image had not much improved since the days of Baxter Basics and Tory Boy. It didn’t help that the leaders were posher than ever and had mostly been members of something called the Bullingdon Club, a society for rich idiots who liked smashing up restaurants, which journalistic Oxford contemporaries cited as evidence of their elitism. I’d never heard of them but it all seemed like something from a Jonathan Coe novel, and the pictures of the Bullingdon Boys did rather make them look like they were in Slytherin, as one Radio 4 comic observed.

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Norton, 1979). 25 http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2018/06/centrists-find-politics-boring-wish-it.html. 26 https://medium.com/@ryanfazio/politics-are-not-the-sum-of-a-person-378102f25334. 27 Burton Egbert Stevenson, The Macmillan Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Famous Phrases (London: Macmillan, 1948) INDEX 28 Days Later (2002) 185 Abbott, Jack 121 abortion 166, 168, 202, 217, 241, 363 Abortion Act 217 Abramson, Lyn Yvonne 30 academia 7–8, 12, 16–17, 136–8, 319–26 activism 7, 316–17, 326 actors 186–7 Adam 33, 219 Adam, Corinna 18 Adams, Henry 90–1 Adams, John 281 Adams, Samuel 281, 331 Adorno, Theodor 135 The Authoritarian Personality 104–7, 143 Aesop’s Fables 260 Africa 15 Agamemnon 187 Agnew, Spiro 154 agnostics 216 agreeableness 108 Aids 125 Ailes, Roger 313, 346 al-Qaida 13, 125, 201 al-Sahaf, Mohammed Saeed 353 alcohol consumption 112–13, 133 Aldred, Ebenezer 61 Alexander, Scott 118, 315–16, 342–3 Allen, William 92 Allen, Woody 102 Alloy, Lauren 30 ‘Alt-Right’ 345, 347 Altemeyer, Bob 107, 333 American Beauty (1999) 106, 184 American Civil Liberties Union 201–2 American constitution 345 American independence 53, 55, 305 American National Election Studies 303 American Political Science Association 300 ‘American Religion’ 222 American Revolution 55, 280–1 Amnesty International 99, 201, 202, 212 ANC 16, 89, 189 ancien régime 178, 333, 358–9 Andrews, Helen 176 Anglicanism 13, 37, 64, 65, 202, 214, 222 Communion 220 High Church 50, 51 norms 79 supremacy 292 anti-apartheid movement 16 anti-Catholicism 232 anti-communism 22, 211 anti-humanitarianism 74 anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) 163 Antichrist 64 Antonia, Lady Fraser 42 apartheid 89, 174 Apollo 29 Aquinas, Thomas 326 Arabs 362 Arbuthnot, Norman 312 aristos 31 Arnold, Matthew 279 art, degenerate 98 Arts Council 197 Aryans 89 ASBOs see anti-social behaviour orders Ashley Madison website 107 Asquith, Robert 168 atheism 52–3, 214–16, 292, 294 see also New Atheism Athelstan, King 126 Athens 31 Atlantic magazine 341, 348, 366 Attenborough, David 195 Attlee, Clement 175 Attlee era 177 Augustine of Hippo 31–3, 35, 349 Augustine, St 110, 291 Auschwitz 98 authoritarian personality 104–7, 118, 334 authoritarianism 140, 148, 208, 262, 329–30, 333–4, 338, 350 autism 138 Ayres, Bill 236 Babeuf, François-Noël 60–1 baby boomers 44, 83, 131, 155 Bad Religion 102 bad-thinkers 144–5, 146, 150, 152 Baldwin, Alec 24 Balfour, Arthur 265 Bank of England 331 Bannon, Steven 152, 309, 347 Baptists 59, 145 barbarism 65, 66, 84 barbarians 12, 131 Bargh, John 115 Barlow, Joel 109 Baron-Cohen, Sacha 333 Barrès, Maurice 95 Basics, Baxter (Viz character) 86, 267 Bastille, storming of the 55, 59, 331 Batbie, Anselme 274 Batek 131 BBC 3, 149, 165, 186, 190–7, 265, 266, 313–14, 337 Beatles 166, 287 beatnik poetry 127 Becker, Ernest 115 Beeching Axe 285 Belgium 303 Belle Époque era 126, 175, 184–5 Benedict, St 373 Benedict XVI, Pope 218, 232, 233 Benn, Tony 18, 21, 42 Bentham, Jeremy 78, 92, 223–4 Berenger, Tom 110 Berlin 20–1, 23, 41–2 Berlin Wall 21, 22, 23, 86 Betjeman, John 285 Bevan, Nye 230 Beyoncé 24 Beyond the Fringe 191 Bible 50, 219, 229, 294 Bible Belt 228 Big Five personality traits 108–13, 137, 363 ‘Big Sort, The’ 295 Bill of Rights 305–6 biological determinism 139 birth control 364 birth rates 362–4 Bishop, Bill 295 Black Death 34–5 Black Lives Matter 338 Black Wednesday 154 Blackadder 331 Blair, Tony 21, 24, 79, 153, 156, 158–61, 163–4, 183, 189, 192, 213, 266–7, 270 Blair era 167, 203–4, 205, 281 ‘Blob, the’ 271 Bloom, Allan 98 Bloom, Paul 321 Bloomsbury 18 ‘blue wave’ 2006 274 Blumenberg, Hans 67 Boas, Franz 133–4 ‘Bobo’ (bohemian bourgeois) 244, 308 Bogart, Humphrey 24 Bolshevik Revolution 303 Bolshevism 226, 246 Borat 333 Bosnia 214 bourgeois 132, 246 bourgeoisie 9, 97, 127, 135 see also Ruling Class Boy Scouts 197 Bradbury, Malcolm 39 brain 116–17 Brando, Marlon 24, 341 Brazil 164 Brecht, Bertolt 186 Breitbart (website) 308, 309, 314, 315, 317–18, 347 Breitbart, Andrew 181, 308 Brennan, Mr 47 Brent, David 192 Brexit 4, 26–7, 103, 186, 195, 270, 346, 353–60, 365, 370 Brexit Referendum (2016) 3, 173, 222, 270, 275, 302, 354–5, 357, 359 Brief Encounter (1945) 162, 168 British Army 9 British Empire 57 British National Party 87 British Potato Council 203 ‘broken windows’ theory 69 Brook 241 Brooke, Heather 298 Brooker, Charlie 249 Brooks, Arthur 82, 191, 299 Who Really Cares 237 Brooks, David 244 ‘brotherhood of man’ 71, 100 Brown, Dan 213 Brown, Gordon 203, 265, 281 Brown era 203–4 Bruinvels, Peter 194 B’Stard, Alan 89 Buchanan, Pat 154–9, 313 Buckley, William F. 68, 295–6, 313 Bullingdon Club 267 Burke, Edmund 47, 53–5, 57–9, 61–3, 65, 66, 68, 70–2, 82, 89–90, 159, 163, 181, 190, 191, 198, 230, 274, 279, 280, 345, 365 Burleigh, Michael 88 Bush, George, Sr 86, 156 Bush, George W. 27, 201, 236, 248, 313 buttons 34–5 Byrne, Liam 266 C2DE social class 5 cable TV 311 Cafod 233 California 4, 320 Calvin, John (Jean) 48, 49, 293 Calvinism 45, 49, 64 Cambridge 49 Cambridge University 52, 55, 145, 151, 326, 348 Camden Labour Party 18 Cameron, David 237, 265, 266, 267, 270, 272, 359 Cameron faction 266, 270, 359 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) 81 Campbell, Alistair 159–60 Camus, Albert 226 Canada 178, 201 capitalism 15, 64, 78, 93, 97, 280, 339 Caplan, Bryan 275 Capra, Frank 123 Captain America comics 237 Carlson, Tucker 365 Carlyle, Thomas 41, 75, 76 cars 285–6 Cash, Johnny 24 Cassandra 28–9, 62, 373 Catharism 254–5 Cathedral, the 202–3, 271 Catholic Church 48, 116, 212, 212–14, 217–18, 232, 233, 269, 333 Catechism 137 Catholic Emancipation Act 289 Catholic Herald (newspaper) 212, 213, 216, 219, 233, 241, 272, 307, 339 Catholicism 11–13, 33, 37, 41–3, 45, 49, 51–2, 54, 57, 62, 64, 75, 134–5, 142, 155, 158, 176, 199, 202, 211–13, 217–18, 222, 230–1, 241, 243, 272–3, 291–2, 294, 296, 339, 363 see also anti-Catholicism Cato Institute 324 Cavaliers 53, 57 Ceauşecu 46 censorship 148, 166, 188–9, 290, 331 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 61 ‘centrist dad’ 8 Chagnon, Napoleon 147 Change 3 Change UK 3 Channel 4 168, 232 charities 57, 199–202, 233, 237 Charles I 49, 55 Charles II 36, 37, 52 Charles-Roux, Fr Jean-Marie 210–11 Chartists 175 Chelsea FC 47 Chesterton, G.

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones

Asperger Syndrome, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, call centre, collapse of Lehman Brothers, credit crunch, deindustrialization, Etonian, facts on the ground, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, green new deal, hiring and firing, housing crisis, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, mass immigration, meritocracy, Neil Kinnock, Occupy movement, pension reform, place-making, plutocrats, post-war consensus, race to the bottom, Right to Buy, rising living standards, social distancing, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, We are the 99%, wealth creators, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working-age population

But before Cameron had even started university, he worked as an adolescent parliamentary researcher for his godfather, the Tory MP Tim Rathbone. A few months later, after his father pulled a few strings, Cameron went to Hong Kong to work for a multinational corporation. Following his graduation from Oxford University, where he was a member of the infamous toffs' drinking society the Bullingdon Club, he was parachuted into a job at Conservative Central Office, which had received a mysterious phone call from Buckingham Palace that can't have ruined his chances. '1 understand that you are to see David Cameron,' a man with a grand voice told a Central Office official. 'I've tried everything Ican to dissuade him from wasting his time on politics but I have failed.

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Overwhelmingly, those on the receiving end were both poor and working class-s-end, according to a survey in 2005, nearly four out of every ten ASBOs went to young people with mental health problems such as Asperger's Syndrome. In one case, a child with Tourette's was given an ASBO for his compulsive swearing. Whether or not you agree with ASBOs, it is difficult to deny that they have increased the bad reputation of young working-class kids and popularized the chav caricature. After all, members of the Bullingdon Club-whose great tradition is to smash up pubs and restaurants-- were never likely to be awarded an ASBO. Even New Labour's own youth justice 'tsar', Professor Rod Morgan, criticized the measures for 'demonizing' a whole section of British youth and criminalizing them for offences that once would have been regarded as 'high jinks', Itis dif- ficult to disagree with author Anthony Horowitz when he says that ASBOs 'add up to create a cumulative vision of a Britain full of yobs, with crack houses on every inner-city estate; drunken youths running amock in provincial towns, and so on.

The Dealmaker: Lessons From a Life in Private Equity by Guy Hands

Airbus A320, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, corporate governance, COVID-19, credit crunch, data science, deal flow, Etonian, family office, financial engineering, fixed income, flag carrier, high net worth, junk bonds, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, Nelson Mandela, North Sea oil, old-boy network, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, proprietary trading, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, subprime mortgage crisis, traveling salesman

Abanto, Nelson, 76 ABBA, 39 Abbey Road Studios, London, 207 Absolute Beginners (1986 film), 169 Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), 148 AC/DC, 167 Aeroflot, 160 Ahuja, Vivek, 306, 308 Air France, 108 Air Wick, 223 Airbus, 156 aircraft, 154–60 Alastalo, Ossi, 312, 313 Albarn, Damon, 211 Alchemy, 263 alcohol, 46, 71, 99–101 Alexander, Stephen, 159 ‘All By Myself’ (Carmen), 213 All That Jazz, 287 Allen, Lily, 205 Allen, Patrick, 94–5 Allen, Woody, 48 Alliance Boots, 164–6, 175, 180, 183, 268 Alliance UniChem, 164 Allianz Capital Partners, 154 Almost Famous (2000 film), 282 Aloha Airlines, 157 Ames, Roger, 217 Analyst Programme, 308 Angel Trains, 110–11, 121, 154 Annington Homes, 278, 279–81, 300 Ansett Worldwide Aviation Services (AWAS), 154–60, 276, 278 Antarctica, 277–8 anti-depressants, 297–8 Apartheid South Africa, 3, 4–5 aphantasia, 29–30 Apollo, 215 Apple, 198 Aquavit, New York, 248 Arora, Nikesh, 198 Arriva, 108 Arsenal FC, 289 art-selling businesses, 36–9, 47, 49, 60–61 Artsake gallery, Oxford, 60–61 Asda, 218 AstraZeneca, 292 AT&T Capital, 123 Athena, 60 Atomic Energy Commission, 78 Australia, 189–90, 273, 276, 299 autism, 11 autobahn, 152, 264 Babcock & Brown, 112 Bahrain, 81, 82 balance sheet insolvency, 231 Bangalore, India, 156 Bank of America, 251 Bank of Scotland, 166 Barber of Seville, The (Rossini), 264 Barclays, 186, 280 Bath, Somerset, 18 Bear Stearns, 186, 194 Beast from the East (2018), 284 Beatles, The, 1, 172, 191, 194, 197, 207–9, 303 Beehive pub, Chipstead, 29 beer, 99–108 Beijing, China, 275 Benn, Anthony ‘Tony’, 50 Benny Hill Show, The (TV series), 50 Better Capital, 263 Bieber, Justin, 199 Big Bang (1986), 77 Biggin Hill Airport, London, 183 Birt, John, Baron, 162, 321 Black Hands Gang, 196, 198 Black, Leon, 215 Blackfriars, London, 39 Blackstone Group, 163, 215 Blair, Anthony ‘Tony’, 162 Blavatnik, Len, 232 bluefin tuna, 166 Blyth, Chay, 19 BNP Paribas, 188 Boeing, 155, 156, 158 Boies, David, 240–41, 245, 247, 249, 252 Boies Schiller, 233–4, 240, 247, 249 bond trading, 66–88 Boots, 164–6, 175, 180, 183, 268 ‘Born This Way’ (Lady Gaga), 141 Borrows, Simon, 189 Bowen, Richard, 193–4 Bowie, David, 169–70 Bradshaw, Kevin, 271 Branch, Margaret, 9, 12, 13 Branson, Richard, 109 Brazil, 157–8 Brexit (2016–20), 319 Brideshead Revisited (Waugh), 45 Bridgewater, 261 Brighterkind, 299 Brighton, East Sussex, 37 Brit Awards, 173 British Legion, 139 British Leyland, 53, 55 British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, 275 British Rail, 108, 196 British Steel, 19 Bromley, Kent, 169 Brown, John, 122, 318 Browne, Dave, 308 Browns, Shoreditch, 105 BSkyB, 198 Buffett, Warren, 193, 215 Bullfinch pub, Sevenoaks, 232 Bullingdon Club, 45 bullying, 7, 12, 15, 17, 18, 23–4, 29 Burger King, 153, 203, 264, 265 Burnham Beeches, Buckinghamshire, 5 Burton, Michael, 255 Bush, George W., 248 Buxted Park Hotel, East Sussex, 218 ‘Bye Bye Life’ (All That Jazz), 287 California, United States, 248 Callas, Maria, 194 Cambridge University, 39, 47 Campaign for Real Ale, 100 Canada Pension Plan (CPP), 146–8, 160 cannabis, 52 Capital Company of America (CCA), 125–9 Capitalism: A Love Story (2009 film), 244–5 Care Quality Commission, 269 Carey, Mariah, 258 Carlyle Group, 215 Carmen, Eric, 213 Catford, London, 105 Catholicism, 52 cattle stations, 276 CDs (compact discs), 170–71, 198, 201, 203, 205 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 124 Cerberus Capital Management, 182, 184, 217, 242, 243 Chelsea FC, 182 Chelsea Flower Show, 185 Cherwell, 59 Chesterton, G.

…

(Beatles, The), 191 Hendon Hall Hotel, London, 301 Hermes, 275 Hertford College, Oxford, 52 Hewlett-Packard, 70 Hill, Rupert, 44 Hill Samuel, 65 Holiday Inn, 182 Holy Trinity school, Cookham, 6–9, 12–13 homosexuality, 248 Hong Kong, 72, 74, 96, 123, 275 ‘Hotel California’ (Eagles), 258 Howard, Mark, 256–7 Howe, Geoffrey, 57 Hugo, Victor, 325 Hurdelbrink, Michael, 126–7, 129 Hyper Entertainment, 131 hyperglycaemia, 32 hypnotism, 294 ‘I Am Human’ (Escape The Fate), ix ‘I Fought the Law’ (The Clash), 229 ‘If–’ (Kipling), 25, 245 In Rainbows (Radiohead), 204 India, 96, 223, 226–7 initial public offerings (IPOs), 160, 163 Inland Revenue, 138, 225–6, 247 Inntrepreneur, 107 Institute for Fiscal Studies, 321 Institute for Government, 321 Intelligent Investor, The (Graham), 16 InterContinental Hotels Group, 182 International Monetary Fund, 50 ‘Internationale, The’, 245 Investcorp, 81 Investment Advisory Committee (IAC), 179–80 Iran, 156 Iraq, 82–3 Ireland, 11 Iron Maiden, 172 Irving, John, 19 Island Records, 207 Islington, London, 321, 323 Italy, 262, 273, 276 Jackson, Gary, 55 Jackson, Janet, 206–7 Jagger, Michael ‘Mick’, 205 Japan, xii–xiii, 72–3, 79, 84, 91–114, 124, 136, 148–9 fish markets in, 166 four as unlucky number, 273 fugu, 148 hostess clubs, 136 leadership in, 200 nemawashi, 101–2, 111 sokaiya, 124 Yakuza, 124, 129 Zaitech bubble (c. 1984–9), 79 Jennings, Waylon, 41 Jericho, Oxford, 60 John Hancock, 225 Jones, Davy, 39 Joseph, Keith, 50 Judd School, Tonbridge, 23–5, 28–9, 31–3 junk bonds, 79–81 Kachingwe, Mayamiko, 151, 155, 157 karaoke, 200 Keble College, Oxford, 34, 35 Kent House, Knightsbridge, 185 Keogh, John, 67, 70, 72, 74 KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti), xiii Kiernan, Jamie, 66 King George Island, Antarctica, 277 King, Justin, 266, 268–71, 273–7, 281, 283–5, 295–6, 308 Kingfisher Airlines, 156 Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, 36–9 Kinski, Michael, 144–5, 146, 148 Kipling, Rudyard, 25, 245 Klein, Michael, 123–4, 161, 163, 173, 181, 187, 219, 222 Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), 164, 165, 215 Kona, Hawaii, 166 Kroll, 158 Kulenkampff, Georg, 157, 159 Kuwait, 82, 222 Lady Gaga, 141 Laine, Sami, 313 Langeni people, 17 Lansdowne’s, Sevenoaks, 26–8, 29 Las Vegas, Nevada, 257 Lawson, Dominic, 57 Lawson, Nigel, 56 Lawson, Nigella, 57 Leahy, Terence ‘Terry’, 266 Leat, Chad, 222, 238, 239 Lehman Brothers, 128, 218 Leicester Square, London, 263 Leighton, Allan, 218 Lemaire Channel, 278 Lennon, John, 208 Levi, Lorenzo, 157 Liar’s Poker (Lewis), 84 Libby, Lewis ‘Scooter’, 241 Limited Partners (LPs), 183 Linden Park, Tunbridge Wells, 33, 34 Linens ’n Things, 215 Livingstone, Kenneth ‘Ken’, 132 Lloyd George, David, 58 Lloyds Banking Group, 267, 271 London, England Citigroup litigation, 255–7 Goldman Sachs, 65–72, 74–8 Nomura, 91–114, 122–40 London School of Economics, 32 London Stock Exchange, 92 Long-Term Capital Management, 125 Love (Cirque du Soleil), 207 Lynch, Gerard, 248 Lynn, Lesley, 222, 226, 227 Mackintosh, Clive, 54 Macmillan, Harold, 58 Macquarie Group, 159 Magdalen College, Oxford, 54, 55 Magic Circle, 232 Magnuson, Rick, 91, 137 Mallya, Vijay, 156 ‘Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies …’ (Jennings and Nelson), 41 Man Group, 182, 186 Manchester United FC, 182, 289 Mandela, Nelson, 5 Mansfield College, Oxford, 34–6, 43–59, 322 Maria Grey Teacher Training College, 4, 9 market crash (1989), 194 Marks & Spencer, 183 Martin, George, 207 Mason, Nicholas, 113 Matsuura, Shu, 105 Mauna Kea, Hawaii, 227 May, Brian, 113 May, Philip, 54, 56 May, Theresa, 56 McCartney, Paul, 208 McCrae, Julian, 321 McDonald’s, 86, 203, 264–6, 278, 283, 289, 290, 309–10, 315 McKillop, Tom, 292 McKinsey, 261, 314 McLaughlan, Roger, 273 Medici family, 262 Melchionna, Jerry, 93, 126–8 mergers and acquisitions, 120 Mermaid Theatre, Blackfriars, 39 Merrill Lynch, 86, 91, 92, 149, 172 Midland Bank, 65 Miles, Bill, 144, 145, 163 Millennium Dome, London, 130–36 Miller, Andrew, 290, 291 Ministry of Defence, 196, 279–81, 300 Minogue, Kylie, 178, 209–10 Mondale, Walter, 130 Monday Club, 53–4 Monkees, The, 39 Moody’s, 169 Moore, Michael, 244–5 Moreno, Glen, 292 Morgan Stanley, 85, 128–9, 155, 226 Morris, Doug, 195 Mortara, Michael, 84 mortgage-backed securities (MBSs), 194 Moscow, Russia, xii–xiii Moulton, Jon, 263 Mthethwa people, 17 Murdoch, James, 198 Murdoch, Rupert, 155, 174 music industry, 169–71, 176, 190, 195–6, 198, 201, 203, 207, 234 ‘My Way’ (Sinatra), 200 Naga, 283, 310–11 Natal University, 3 National Association for Gifted Children, 9 National Lottery, 117 Nazi Germany (1933–45), 9, 26, 33 Nazzaro, Pasquale, 290, 291 Nelson Street, Oxford, 60 Nelson, Willie, 41 nemawashi, 101–2, 111 New Century, 181 New Jersey, United States, 222 New Millennium Experience Company, 133–6 New York Times, 169 New York, United States, 69, 75, 80, 84 Citigroup litigation, 233, 234, 238–52 Nomura, 125, 126 Pearl Street, 80, 81, 240 New Zealand, 225 News Corporation, 155 Newcourt, 123 newts, 132 Nicoli, Eric, 173, 174, 176, 198–9, 242, 256 Nikko, 79 Nirvana, 181 Nixon, Peter, 37 Nomura, xii–xiv, 79, 91–114, 121, 123–40, 143–4, 313 Angel Trains, 110–11, 121 Annington Homes, 279 AT&T Capital, 123 CCA, 125–9 Citigroup and, 123–4 Millennium Dome, 130–36 PFG, 98–114, 120, 129, 137, 144, 313 Phoenix Inns, 100–108 sokaiya scandal (1997), 124 Terra Firma and, 225 Unique Pub Company, 123 US shares listing (2000), 136–7 Nonconformist Christianity, 43 Norman, Archibald, 218 North Carolina, 148 North Sea oil, xiii, xv Northern Foods, 220 Northern Ireland, 50 Norway, 264–6 O’Donnell, Augustine ‘Gus’, 162, 186 O’Driscoll, Pat, 220 Oaktree Capital, 215 Odeon, 198 Odeon Cinemas, 278 Old Government House Hotel, Guernsey, 180 Old Lane, 226–7 Old, Richard, 55 Oman, 302, 305 Ono, Yoko, 208 Operation Desert Storm (1991), 82–3 Oriel College, Oxford, 49 Orpington, Kent, 38 Osaka, Japan, 148 Oxford University, 4, 10, 32–6, 39, 43–59, 263 Bullingdon Club, 45 Conservative Association (OUCA), 53–8, 61 debating society, 49–50 drinking culture, 46 Hertford College, 52 Magdalen College, 54, 55 Mansfield College, 34–6, 43–59, 322 Union, 53, 54, 56, 58–9 University College, 321 Pandit, Vikram, 223, 226–7 Panel on Takeovers and Mergers, 178 Parmaco, 296, 300, 311–16 Parmalat, 243 Partners Group, 316 Patten, John, 52–3 Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, 241 Pea Stacks, Guernsey, 325–6 Pearl Street, New York, 80, 81, 240 Peasants’ Revolt (1381), 321 Pegasus Aviation Finance Company, 155 Penner, Ethan, 91–3, 124–8, 170 Permira, 173 Personal Presentations, 315 Pessina, Stefano, 164, 166 philosophy, 48 Phoenix, Arizona, 86 Phoenix Inns, 100–108 photography, 14, 25, 29–31 Pimlico, London, 169 Pink Floyd, 113, 172, 178 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 276 pobbles, 28 Point, The (1977 play), 39 poker, 29 Poland, 57–8 Poster Shop, London, 60 Premier Inn, 316 Prescott, John, 132, 134 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), 135 Prince, Charles ‘Chuck’, 188, 217, 223 Principal Finance Group (PFG), 98–114, 120, 129, 137, 144, 160, 313 private equity, 98, 110, 118–22, 123, 177, 193 Private Guy, 58–9 Project Blackjack, 219 Project Ford, 273 Project Poker, 219 pronunciation, 11 Proposition 8 (2008), 248 prostitution, 195 Prudential Insurance, 170 Pryce, Tim, 138, 150, 180, 217, 224, 232, 233, 247, 248, 249, 252 pubs, 100–108, 123 Punja, Riaz, 155 punk music, xi, 43 Punta Arenas, Chile, 277 Qaboos bin Said, Sultan of Oman, 302 Qantas, 108 Qatar, 268 Queen (band), 113 Queen’s University Belfast, 32 Radiohead, 172, 204 Railtrack, 108 Railway and Bike pub, Sevenoaks, 26 railways, 108–11, 121, 196 Rakoff, Jed Saul, 236, 251–2 Randolph Hotel, Oxford, 66 Ravenscroft Preparatory School, Somerset, 13–19, 23 Reckitt Benckiser, 223 Renoir, Pierre-Auguste, 325 Retreat, The, Cookham, 6 ‘Revolution 1’ (Beatles, The), 303 Rhode Island, 126 Rhodesia (1965–79), xv, 4, 5, 6 Riccardi family, 262 Ritter, E.

Drink?: The New Science of Alcohol and Your Health by David Nutt

Boris Johnson, Bullingdon Club, carbon footprint, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, impulse control, Kickstarter, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, microbiome, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)

In fact, ‘uppers and downers’ is the most popular combination in the history of drug-taking. Another example of this is cocaine and alcohol. Back in the 1890s, when cocaine was legal, a wine called Mariani from Italy contained both. And it was endorsed by the Pope, no less. And you may have heard the rumours about David Cameron, Boris Johnson and other Bullingdon Club members allegedly taking cocaine and drinking alcohol at parties.5 The reason why people might do this is in order to be able to drink more and for longer. Interestingly, when in the 1990s the Icelandic government passed a law to allow 24-hour drinking, there was subsequently an increase in amphetamine use.6 One of the issues with cocaine and alcohol is that they work together in the body to produce a new chemical, called coca-ethylene (CE).

Reaching for Utopia: Making Sense of an Age of Upheaval by Jason Cowley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, coherent worldview, Corn Laws, corporate governance, crony capitalism, David Brooks, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Etonian, eurozone crisis, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, illegal immigration, Jeremy Corbyn, liberal world order, Neil Kinnock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, open borders, open immigration, plutocrats, post-war consensus, public intellectual, Right to Buy, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, technological determinism, University of East Anglia

It coincided with the cult of the ‘New Romantic’ in pop and encouraged fashion-conscious young men to grow their fringes long, wear fine white shirts, flannels and cricket sweaters. Several friends of mine, who were contemporaries of David Cameron at Oxford, liked to dress in what we called the ‘retro-Brideshead’ style and Cameron back then was a recognisably neo-Brideshead archetype, right down to his floppy fringe, cricket sweaters and membership of the Bullingdon Club (a membership he shared with the fictional Flyte). Cameron was one of those students at Oxford people knew of and spoke about, even if they didn’t actually know him. Journalists such as Toby Young and James Delingpole, who knew Cameron a little back then, write enviously even today of the effect of his youthful hauteur and insouciance.

All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work by Joanna Biggs

Anton Chekhov, bank run, banking crisis, Bullingdon Club, call centre, Chelsea Manning, credit crunch, David Graeber, Desert Island Discs, Downton Abbey, emotional labour, Erik Brynjolfsson, financial independence, future of work, G4S, glass ceiling, industrial robot, job automation, land reform, low skilled workers, mittelstand, Northern Rock, payday loans, Right to Buy, scientific management, Second Machine Age, Sheryl Sandberg, six sigma, Steve Jobs, trickle-down economics, unpaid internship, wages for housework, Wall-E

The soothing Sunday evening soap opera made the country estate into a metaphor for the nation: the indebted Earl of Grantham must modernise; the kitchen maid must upskill; the rebellious daughter who crosses class lines must die of puerperal fever. For Lord Somerleyton, with his belief in the traditional class structures with layers high and low, the get-stuck-in values of his parents’ time have ‘been washed away, pretty much’, but for the TUC, the Bullingdon Club elite is bringing a Downton Abbey-style society back to twenty-first-century Britain. If the nation is a family, and the family a nation, where does that leave women? Lord Somerleyton didn’t know until he was 18 that his father would endow the estate according to primogeniture. Why would he know?

Social Class in the 21st Century by Mike Savage

Bullingdon Club, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Clapham omnibus, Corn Laws, deindustrialization, deskilling, Downton Abbey, emotional labour, financial independence, gender pay gap, gentrification, Gini coefficient, income inequality, liberal capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, meritocracy, moral panic, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, old-boy network, precariat, psychological pricing, Sloane Ranger, The Spirit Level, the strength of weak ties, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, very high income, winner-take-all economy, young professional

We see this syndrome operating very actively in the search for ‘talent’ embarked upon by leading companies and organizations acting to ‘hothouse’ their star performers in ‘Winner takes all’ markets. Meritocracy is not a curb to escalating inequality; it is actually implicated within it. In this respect, conventional images of George Osborne and David Cameron in their Bullingdon Club Oxford days, with the implication that the closed, old-fashioned elite world continues to look after its own, are misleading. Such images – for instance of an ‘Establishment’ – can be mobilized to suggest that if only we could have ‘true’ meritocracy and break down those remaining status barriers at the top, then we might be able to address the inequities of social class.

The Lost Decade: 2010–2020, and What Lies Ahead for Britain by Polly Toynbee, David Walker

banking crisis, battle of ideas, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, call centre, car-free, centre right, collective bargaining, congestion charging, corporate governance, crony capitalism, Crossrail, David Attenborough, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, energy transition, Etonian, financial engineering, first-past-the-post, G4S, gender pay gap, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global village, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, housing crisis, income inequality, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Dyson, Jeremy Corbyn, Large Hadron Collider, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass immigration, moral panic, mortgage debt, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, payday loans, pension reform, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, quantitative easing, Right to Buy, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, smart meter, Uber for X, ultra-processed food, urban renewal, working-age population

Milburn’s resignation letter savaged austerity and failed economic policy, saying they were leading to ‘more anger, more resentment and [creating] a breeding ground for populism’. Owning wealth had become more influential: the child of a homeowner was three times more likely to own their own home than the child of a non-property owner when they grew up. In the 1990s that had been only twice as likely. The public conversation was surreal. At the moment members of the Bullingdon Club cemented their hold on Downing Street, reports highlighted how few people from working-class backgrounds there were in the arts, theatre, music, law, journalism or finance. Children from professional backgrounds were 80 per cent more likely to go into professional jobs. Older artists and performers from working-class backgrounds who had sailed through arts and drama courses for free a generation back warned that future Hamlets would all be Harrovians.

The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save It by Stuart Maconie

"there is no alternative" (TINA), banking crisis, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, David Attenborough, Desert Island Discs, don't be evil, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Elon Musk, Etonian, Extinction Rebellion, failed state, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, G4S, gentrification, Golden age of television, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greta Thunberg, helicopter parent, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, North Sea oil, Own Your Own Home, plutocrats, post-truth, post-war consensus, rent control, retail therapy, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Russell Brand, Silicon Valley, Stephen Fry, surveillance capitalism, The Chicago School, universal basic income, Winter of Discontent

But I don’t feel that way, and even framing that thought seems mean and disloyal and treacherous. Because I’d rather have grown up pretending to be Johnny Rep with a plastic football, drinking illicit Pernod with Anne Thomas and listening to ‘Floy Joy’ in a car park than to have ever set foot in the dining room of the Bullingdon Club or worn an Eton collar. You had to watch out for the odd flying can of hot ash. But it was worth it. In 1985 I walked out of a job I hated and into a new career in a new town, just as David Bowie once sang. Well actually, he didn’t. It’s an instrumental. But the comparison works well and literally.

David Mitchell: Back Story by David Mitchell

British Empire, Bullingdon Club, call centre, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Desert Island Discs, Downton Abbey, energy security, gentrification, Golden age of television, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, Russell Brand, Stephen Fry

Gus Brown is playing the mysterious benefactor, Ben E Factor: ‘Here is a blank cheque. I only wish it could be more.’ This is from the first photoshoot Rob and I ever did together – we were still young enough to think that irony can take the curse off gurning. With James Bachman and Olivia Colman, just hanging out – the Bullingdon Club had nothing on us. Jeffrey Bernard is 21. Outside my parents’ house when Footlights came to Oxford to do a gig at the Playhouse. From left: Nick Nurock, me, Phil Radden, Robert Webb (seated), Matthew Holness, Jon Taylor (seated), Charles Dean, Tom Hilton, Charlie Hartill (seated), James Bachman, Claire Taylor and Sarah Moule.

March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019 by Stewart Lee

Airbnb, AltaVista, anti-communist, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, Donald Trump, Etonian, fake news, Ford Model T, imposter syndrome, Jeremy Corbyn, New Journalism, off-the-grid, Overton Window, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, white flight

Political turmoil has left humourists with nothing to aim at 16 July 2017 Last summer I wrote a comedy drama script, currently ‘in development with a major broadcaster’, concerning a charming, confident, clever and Machiavellian politician. Named Horace Thompson, he manipulates popular culture to consolidate support for a controversial referendum that he narrowly won, intending to further his own self-interest. And he was in the Bullingdon Club. And he lives in Islington. (I don’t know where I got the brilliant idea for this character from. Sometimes I think I am a genius, or some kind of unwitting god, forcibly exiled to Earth, his memory of his own divinity erased by jealous members of his former pantheon.) But like Liam Fox and David Davis and all the bullying Brexiteer shitbags, the charming, confident, clever and Machiavellian politician the character of Horace Thompson is inspired by no longer seems quite so charming, confident, clever and Machiavellian.

Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison by The Class Ceiling Why it Pays to be Privileged (2019, Policy Press)

affirmative action, Ascot racecourse, Boris Johnson, Bullingdon Club, classic study, critical race theory, discrete time, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, gender pay gap, gig economy, Gini coefficient, glass ceiling, Hyperloop, if you build it, they will come, imposter syndrome, income inequality, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, knowledge economy, longitudinal study, Martin Parr, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microaggression, nudge theory, nudge unit, old-boy network, performance metric, psychological pricing, school choice, Skype, starchitect, The Spirit Level, the strength of weak ties, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, work culture

Elite universities, in other words, are not monolithic, and individuals entering from specific origins (in terms of class privilege and elite schooling) are clearly better able to capitalise on opportunities once inside. One has only to think about the enduring connection between elite backgrounds, elite schools and key Oxbridge clubs such as the Footlights, the Cambridge Apostles and the Bullingdon Club to see such elite channels in action.20 These findings also arguably represent another stark rejoinder to the ‘great equaliser’ thesis. Even educational institutions like Oxford and Cambridge, heralded as the ultimate meritocratic sorting houses, do not necessarily wash away the advantages of class background.

Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland

"World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, assortative mating, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, Bullingdon Club, business climate, call centre, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, double helix, energy security, estate planning, experimental subject, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, high net worth, income inequality, invention of the steam engine, job automation, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, liberation theology, light touch regulation, linear programming, London Whale, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Max Levchin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, NetJets, new economy, Occupy movement, open economy, Peter Thiel, place-making, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, postindustrial economy, Potemkin village, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, Sheryl Sandberg, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, starchitect, stem cell, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, the long tail, the new new thing, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, trade route, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wage slave, Washington Consensus, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

And, like swallows, their favoured rich parts in summer are now their English bolt-holes in the north,” writes Harry Mount, the author of the essay, who also happens to be a second cousin of David Cameron, Britain’s aristocratic Conservative prime minister, a graduate of Westminster, one of Britain’s most exclusive private schools, and a former member of the Bullingdon Club, the exclusive and controversial private society at Oxford. “Britain now has a Wimbledon economy: we provide the charming venue, and foreigners come over to enjoy themselves on Centre Court. The paradox is that the recession has accelerated the globalisation of England. The English have been hard hit: with half a million jobs lost, and our rich stung—or chased abroad—by the 50p tax and the tax on bank bonuses.

Three Years in Hell: The Brexit Chronicles by Fintan O'Toole

airport security, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, blockchain, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, classic study, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, deindustrialization, deliberate practice, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Downton Abbey, Etonian, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, full employment, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, l'esprit de l'escalier, labour mobility, late capitalism, open borders, rewilding, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, technoutopianism, zero-sum game

He is a product of the tight little world of English class privilege in which the same people move from elite schools to elite universities to (often interchangeable) careers in politics and the media. (Johnson’s contemporaries at Oxford included David Cameron, a fellow member of the aggressively elitist Bullingdon Club; his own main rivals for the Tory leadership, Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove; and the political editors of the BBC and Channel 4 who now report on him.) From Oxford he soon sailed into a position as a graduate trainee at The Times. It was there that he learned a valuable lesson: it pays to fabricate stories.

Londongrad: From Russia With Cash; The Inside Story of the Oligarchs by Mark Hollingsworth, Stewart Lansley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Bob Geldof, Bullingdon Club, business intelligence, company town, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, crony capitalism, Donald Trump, energy security, Etonian, F. W. de Klerk, Global Witness, income inequality, kremlinology, Larry Ellison, Londongrad, mass immigration, mega-rich, Mikhail Gorbachev, offshore financial centre, paper trading, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, power law, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Skype, Sloane Ranger

Later, reports emerged that during this dinner Mandelson had ‘dripped pure poison’ about Gordon Brown into the ear of Osborne, who was then fingered as the source for these damaging allegations (Mandelson insisted ‘there was no poison being dripped’). By the following day, Sunday 24 August, the Osbornes had moved into Chateau Rothschild. The Shadow Chancellor had known Nat Rothschild since they were contemporaries at Colet Court preparatory school and then Oxford, where they were both members of the Bullingdon Club. Given the unpopularity of the Labour government at the time, Rothschild perhaps saw his old friend as a potential ally. That evening the investment banker invited Osborne, the Conservative fundraiser Andrew Feldman, and James Goodwin, a former adviser to President Clinton, for drinks. Then, according to Rothschild, Osborne invited Feldman to accompany him on Deripaska’s yacht to solicit a donation to the Conservative Party.

Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle With Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott

Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Bullingdon Club, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Etonian, gig economy, global pandemic, high-speed rail, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, lockdown, nudge unit, open economy, Rishi Sunak, Ronald Reagan, Skype, social distancing, zoonotic diseases

Hospital staff were instructed to review all patients twice a day and ask themselves: ‘Why not home? Why not today?’ Stevens had a long-standing connection with the prime minister stretching back decades. The pair had been unlikely friends after meeting at Balliol College, Oxford, where they studied in the mid-1980s. Johnson, an old Etonian and a former member of the Bullingdon Club, the notorious all-male dining society, was politically centre-right, while Stevens, known as ‘Simes’, had been educated at a Birmingham comprehensive school and was a member of the Labour Club. Yet their friendship was forged during a trip to America with the Oxford Union debating society.4 Many years later, when standing to be Conservative Party leader in 2019, Johnson described how Stevens had helped him get elected as union president in 1986.

Why We Can't Afford the Rich by Andrew Sayer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, anti-globalists, asset-backed security, banking crisis, banks create money, basic income, biodiversity loss, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, carbon tax, collective bargaining, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, declining real wages, deglobalization, degrowth, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, demand response, don't be evil, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, en.wikipedia.org, Etonian, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, G4S, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, green new deal, high net worth, high-speed rail, income inequality, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", James Dyson, job automation, Julian Assange, junk bonds, Kickstarter, labour market flexibility, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land value tax, long term incentive plan, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, new economy, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, patent troll, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, popular capitalism, predatory finance, price stability, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, working poor, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

As Colin Ley puts it, ‘global financial markets are supposed to register the collective judgement of the owners of capital about how profitable it is to operate in a given country where all factors, including the risk of adverse government policies, are taken into account’ (Ley, C. (2001) Market driven politics, London: Verso, p 21). 7 Johnson is the Mayor of London and, like Cameron, a former member of the exclusive Oxford Bullingdon Club (in other words, gang), whose members used to get drunk and run round Oxford and smash up restaurants – with impunity. See also Huffington Post UK (2013) ‘Is being a banker genetic? Boris Johnson looks to intelligence to explain equality gap’, 28 November, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/11/28/iq-intelligence-boris-johnson-_n_4355372.html. 8 Bourdieu, P. (1993) Sociology in question, London: Sage, p 14. 9 Chakrabortty, A. (2013) ‘Looking for a party funding scandal: try David Cameron’s Conservatives’, Guardian, 8 July, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/08/party-funding-scandal-david-cameron-conservatives. 10 Froud, J. et al. (2012) ‘Groundhog Day: elite power, democratic disconnects and the failure of financial reform in the UK’, CRESC Working Paper No 108, University of Manchester, p 16, http://www.cresc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Groundhog%20Day%20Elite%20power,%20democratic%20disconnects%20and%20the%20failure%20of%20financial%20reform%20in%20the%20UK%20CRESC%20WP108%20(Version%202).pdf. 11 The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (2011) ‘Tory Party funding from City doubles under Cameron’, 8 February, http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/02/08/city-financing-of-the-conservative-party-doublesunder-cameron/. 12 The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (2011) ‘Hedge funds, financiers and private equity make up 27% of Tory funding’, 30 September, http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/09/30/hedgefunds-financiers-and-private-equity-tycoons-make-up-27-of-tory-funding/. 13 Hutton, W. (2010) Them and us, London: Little, Brown, p 179. 14 Powerbase (2001) ‘New Labour: donors’, http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/New_Labour:_Donors. 15 Peston, R. (2008) ‘Pointing fingers at the plutocrats’, Telegraph, 26 January, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/2783334/Pointing-fingers-at-the-plutocrats.html. 16 Wintour, P. (2013) ‘Labour backer says £1.65m donation was given in shares to avoid tax’, Guardian, 6 June, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/06/labour-party-backer-donation-tax.