Eton, politics and Captain Hook
Photo credit should read JACK TAYLOR/AFP via Getty Images
In JM Barrie’s Peter Pan, after his duel with Peter, Captain Hook is deserted by his crew on the Jolly Roger, leaving him to be picked off by the crocodile. His dying words before the croc gets him, are “Floreat Etona” — may Eton flourish. For along with having “a distinguished slouch” and “hair dressed in long curls, like black candles about to melt,” Hook is an old Etonian and graduate of Oxford (Balliol).
Eton has produced a disproportionate number of Britain’s leaders. In the world of politics, Boris Jonson is Eton’s 20th prime minister out of 55.
My father and brother went to Eton. My strongest memory of the school is of the constant Church services in medieval chapels, the hymn singing, and the rigour of the academic environment. But the overriding aim was to be financially wealthy — to be a leader and to belong to the club. Friendship and self-knowledge were less of a priority.
Boarding at a top public school costs around £40,000 a year — less than a tenth of that is laid out for a state school sixth former. As a pupil, even if you are not aware of the figures, you are aware of the segregation from other children according to wealth. When you add to that the hymn singing and the repetitive brainwashing of the daily Christian ritual (which pays only lip service to Christianity’s message of inclusion, humility and loving your neighbour) then, unless you reject you parents’ choice of education, what you must take from this is a glaring double standard.
Does this go some way to explaining the jerking body language and the highly-affected speaking styles of both Jacob Rees Mogg and Boris Johnson? Does having an education in ignoring uncomfortable truths also explain the Tory climate change deniers such as the old Etonians Charles Moore (former editor of Telegraph) and Matt Ridley, (chairman of Northern Rock during its collapse, now a columnist for the Times).
Is Dominic Cumming’s radicalism and knee jerk aggression not a kicking against and an attempt to make amends for his private education and sheltered background? I also include Tony Blair in this, as a boarding school kid with a record for lying who was also capable of the moral contortions necessary to square this with his church-going conscience. And yes, Trump went to boarding school, the Military Academy in New York — an institution also big on ritual and tradition.
Which leads us to our present problems with both our government and democracy. to become a politician in Britain, it helps to have been to Oxbridge. Yet admissions to both Oxon and Cambs are weighted significantly in favour of private school children, through the interview process. In my son’s sixth form year at a comprehensive school, 30 had good enough A-levels to get an interview for Oxbridge, but only two got places. Four years later with my daughter, the same number got an interview, but they took only a single pupil. This is despite the fact that state school children with the same A-levels get better degrees than privately educated children.
I have always thought it surprising that our democracy has been able to function with the distortions of the private school / Oxbridge system. Maybe in the past it hasn’t mattered so much that our leaders had limited social experience and received such an unusual education, for up till now they were more easily held to account. In our present era, however, where wild stories spread faster online than truth, politics is in many ways the perfect job for a liar.
On the floor of the Commons a direct reference to a member as lying is not allowed. A BBC interviewer is also not able to say that a politician is lying, and our current law does not allow a serving politician to be charged for deliberately lying. Johnson is a routine deceiver, as evidenced by Prime Minister’s Questions. Johnson and Starmer make for an interesting comparison. In them we see the privilege of Eton and Oxford against the state-funded Reigate Grammar and Leeds Uni (Starmer was also a junior exhibitioner at the Guildhall School of Music). But in the Commons, all Starmer is allowed to do is confront Johnson with another truth which Boris bats away aggressively, asserting an inflammatory accusation he knows to be false but which nonetheless gets reported in the press. As Sacha Baron Cohen of all people so memorably put it: “Democracy depends on shared truths — autocracy on shared lies”.
It is not for nothing that Hook was characterised as an Etonian, plundering being a more notable Etonian mindset than compassion. We can surely do better. The pandemic has shown the importance of responsible leadership. A former US ambassador has already said that Trump’s lies are causing the US to slide towards autocracy. Perhaps we should ask why such contemporary Anglo Saxon leaders have such a capacity for deception and whether our compromised education system also plays a part? Wouldn’t recognising the inherent integrity of state schooling, supporting it more and private schools less, as in continental Europe, be a step in creating a deeper sense of shared truths?
Johnson has led us out of the EU and is putting up borders, in the Irish Sea and possibly also around Kent. The EU who begged us to stay, but nevertheless allowed us to withdraw. So when Johnson wrote as he did last week to Tory supporters and in the Telegraph, accusing the EU of “issuing outrageous threats to carve up our union… put up blockades across our country, divide our own land,” he is not negotiating or adopting a tactic, but merely inciting anger against a foreign “other” to foist blame onto them for an outcome that he himself has created.
Like Captain Hook, Johnson’s prestigious education, ability to quote Greek and his superficial charm has made him a leader. But lacking all moral integrity, he is a leader who is wreaking havoc.
