Alastair Campbell’s diary: Public school teaches Tories to have OUR cake and eat it

My sincere thanks to ex-newsreader Anna Ford, who is aware of my longstanding view that the country’s private schools are a curse on our country, for alerting me to a book that confirms how right I have been all along.

Sad Little Men, by Richard Beard, outlines the damage boarding school education did to him. More interesting, however, is the insight he gives into why David Cameron and Boris Johnson have done so much damage to the country, and the extent to which their school is responsible.

One of the most depressing facts in the history of our so-called meritocracy is that Eton, that one bloody school, has produced three times more prime ministers than the Labour Party in its entire period of existence.

For generations the top private schools, and especially Eton, have taught their students that they are superior, destined for greatness. They have instilled the sense of normality that it is OK not to be loved, which is how most feel when sent away as young children.

Perhaps the most chilling line in the entire book is this: “Boarding school was where we went, aged eight, to learn to despise other people.” Bullying or being bullied is part of growing up. Emotional suppression is essential. This breeds stoicism, and if that translates into a brutal lack of empathy, so be it. They must say things are fine, even when they’re not.

Having two Etonian PMs, dominant over a decade, Beard argues, is likely to play out in the weakening of “public services their parents pay to avoid”. Hard to argue.

They are taught, says Beard, “to have our cake and eat it”. If you get into a scrape, what matters is how you get out of it. As Cameron found when caught taking drugs, “for people like us, law was negotiable”.

They learn a peculiarly English version of history, all Drake playing bowls, to Nelson seeing no ships, and victory of Wellington at Waterloo “via the playing fields of Eton … whatever the historical question, British national destiny was the answer.” Beard, who went to Radley, argues this actively bred English exceptionalism, not to mention racist and sexist views.

Etonians, Harrovians, Radleians were great men. There are few great women.

They are bred never to say: “I don’t know,” nor to admit to being wrong. Cameron is “right” four times on the first two pages of his autobiography. The referendum was “the right thing to do.” Quitting after he lost it likewise. “He’s so fixated on being right, I worry for how secretly wrong he must feel,” says Beard.

Cameron said of his Brexit referendum that he did not fully anticipate the strength of feeling it would unleash. “Of course he didn’t,” writes Beard. “Strong feelings were involved, and also the common people. He was floundering in a pair of blind spots… he gorged on a double helping of ignorance, undisturbed since the days when his sense of right and wrong was shaped by which boys got to wear the fancy waistcoat.”

Of the six men who worked on Cameron’s manifesto for the election which secured his pre-referendum majority before his post-referendum ignominy, five went to Eton, one to St Paul’s. They are taught to use connections. Covid corruption and Greensill lobbying have made that clear.

Read this book, and you understand why Johnson speaks as he does. They learn to be good at insults. “As long as we weren’t girls, swots, oiks, wogs or queers, we could be jolly decent chaps… we laughed at anyone not like us, and the repertoire on repeat included gags about slaves and nuns and women hurdlers.” Beard cites “Remoaner” as a classic private school bully word.

Of Johnson, he writes: “He flaunted shamelessly what the rest of us tried to conceal: he was chaotic, unformed, cruel, slapdash, essentially frivolous. When he messed up he was just a boy, with his boyishly ruffled hair, and expected to be excused. An expert dissembler, he discovered the best place to hide was in plain sight.” He is still doing it.

Etonians, I learn, wrote the music to Rule Britannia, Jerusalem, and Land of Hope and Glory, the three great patriotic anthems. Etonian George Orwell insisted public school patriotism isn’t faked. “They had to feel themselves true patriots, even while they plundered their countrymen.”

Read that line again… “They had to feel themselves true patriots, even while they plundered their countrymen.” Brexit. Universal credit cuts. Social care policy, which helps the wealthy at the expense of the poor. Rail betrayal in the North. Playing fast and loose with peace in Northern Ireland. These too are products of the playing fields of Eton.

Given the damage Johnson, Cameron, Rees-Mogg and their mates have done, serious consideration should be put into putting the damned place into special measures, with a view to being shut down.