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Why is it always public schoolboys, by the way? Whenever this subject crops up, it is always couched in terms of pushy posh boys. What about the public schoolgirls? You’ve seen Saltburn, haven’t you?
But I’m deflecting from the big question. One reason why we are talking about public schoolboys is that there has been a purging in government — and, indeed, the Commons — of some of the most visible poshos like Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and most of the cabinet, in fact. Just four Old Etonians remain in the Commons, presumably as part of a diversity and inclusion strategy. They are now so endangered that Labour may develop a plan for their protection.
It gets worse. The new Labour government is about to whack VAT on private-school fees for no particular reason other than they need the money and can get away with it. Universities are under pressure to take fewer pupils from the private sector. Suddenly it appears not to pay to pay. It’s finis mundi for the ruling class.
And these days there’s no escaping the opprobrium just because your family is middle class. If your parents paid and you can conjugate a Latin verb, well, mortuus es cibum. Don’t think telling people your dad was a toolmaker will get you off the hook either. It doesn’t cut the mustard any more. And nor for that matter does saying “cut the mustard” — and how do you cut mustard anyway? Doesn’t it just come in a jar? And no one’s fooled into forgetting your privileged start in life because you wore a keffiyeh at your graduation ceremony.
As both an attendee of and someone who sent his children to private London day schools, I ought to have a dog in this fight, but then the private-school principle is surely about giving your own kids a head start and mine are now adults. So I’m not going to whine about that stable door being closed after my own horses have already bolted. Though, of course, 10 years earlier and I’d have been out there protesting around the Mexican clay chiminea with the best of you.
Mind you, if I were a true class warrior, I’m still not sure I’d be breaking out the bunting. (Do they have bunting in state schools? Oh, sorry. I was confusing it with punting.) For one thing, it’s only the financially sensitive aspiring middle class getting whacked by the VAT move. The genuinely loaded will cope.
More importantly, if you really think privilege is about to go down the Swanee, you really haven’t been paying attention for the past 1,000 years. The rich, and indeed the comfortably off, will always find a way to navigate purges of the posh. Have you noticed all those private-school Oxbridge candidates switching to state sixth-form colleges for their A-levels as universities look to boost their state-sector recruitment ratio? Or those wealthy families pushing up house prices in the catchment areas of the best state schools?
And even if universities do get wise to these tricks, private schools are sending more pupils to Harvard and other Ivy League establishments that prize athletic skills and an ability to hold a fish knife. Those who can pay to push their children forward, use contacts to find them jobs and internships and help them with the cost of their first mortgage will continue to find ways to do so.
It is not as if we don’t need these people. For one thing, they are the only ones who understand the difference between public and private schools, both of which are in fact fee-paying and often selective. In the UK, public schools are essentially the really old posh ones which offer boarding, while private schools are the ones you’ve never heard of but still pay for.
And let’s not forget, the privileged are good at submerging when they need to. If a posh accent is suddenly a stigma, well, then they’ll go all Guy Ritchie and roll out the mockney accents so beloved of the Fulham Massive. They may take a sabbatical from active politics for a few years to put some hay in the loft, as David Cameron likes to put it, but there are other paths to power and influence.
Sooner or later, the country will tire of rulers who can’t play lacrosse. So nil desperandum. The private-school crowd may be down, but it’s not out. In fact, it’s probably not even down.
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