Bullingdon Club Britain: The Ransacking of a Nation

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Valentina Romei, ‘Living standards grow at slowest rate since second world war’, Financial Times (January 2020). Andrew Gimson, Johnsons’ biographer, told me, “The Bullingdon boys wanted to take greater risks. They thought of themselves as elite, proud of its money and its connections.”

A statement released on Thursday read: “The Cabinet Office has announced today that the prime minister has appointed Prof Gillian Peele and Ewen Fergusson as members of the committee on standards in public life, with effect from 1 August 2021.” At Bristol in 2016, the year Sophie Pender began her degree, the proportion of private school pupils was close to 40%. Photograph: Alamy

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A fictional Oxford dining society inspired by clubs like the Bullingdon forms the basis of the play Posh by Laura Wade, staged in April 2010 at the Royal Court Theatre, London. Membership of the club while still a student is depicted in the play as giving a student admission to a secret and corrupt network of influence within the Tory Party later in life. [47] The play was later adapted into the 2014 film The Riot Club. Understandably, they greeted this with some scepticism and I could never quite articulate the grounds for this paradox. But, two-and-a-half years into his premiership, it’s clear that Johnson vividly displays the problem of a populist prime minister who has no clear project or programme: he is completely dependent on the populace. There are a number of reasons for this, says the magazine, chief among them being that the club “just couldn’t survive 11 years of bad headlines from 2005 to 2016”, referring to the time when Cameron, Osborne and Johnson were “the most powerful Conservatives in the country”. A set of club rules from 1850, found in a small blue booklet with gold embossed letters and yellowed with age, describes the very same outfit they wear to this day. “The Uniform of the club,” it says, “shall consist of a Blue Tie, Blue Coat, Brass Buttons, Buff Waistcoat, Blue Trousers.”

The Cost of Living Crisis Byline Times investigates the causes and consequences of Britain’s biggest recession for 30 years Tommy Agar-Robartes: a very British gentleman – National Trust". nationaltrust.org.uk. Archived from the original on 9 May 2014 . Retrieved 8 May 2014. Former pupils of public schools such as Eton, Harrow, St. Paul's, Stowe, Radley, Oundle, Shrewsbury, Rugby and Winchester form the bulk of its membership. After beginning working life at Morgan Stanley, Matthew Benson soon became involved in the property business, establishing his own consultancy and is now a director at Edinburgh firm Rettie.Ewen Alexander Nicholas Fergusson (1962–), Member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life [69] The hospitality sector suffered badly. But we got through it for the sake of hospitals. Removing the pub and the drinking party from our lives was tough on a nation that could often only disinhibit itself through drink. But we did it out of duty, care and compassion. I personally cannot think of anyone in my immediate circle who did not lose a close relative during these terrible two years in which 170,000 people died of Coronavirus. Most starkly, the head of state, the Queen, had to mourn her husband of 73 years in isolation. We denied ourselves something precious – fun, conviviality, warmth, even collective grieving – for something more precious: life itself.

The body has put the Bullingdon on its list of proscribed organisations, with president Ben Etty telling the Cherwell student newspaper it had “no place” in the modern Tory party. But his legacy will be shaped by his doomed gamble on "solving" the Europe question which had split the Conservatives. Within hours of losing the EU referendum on 23 June 2016 he had quit Number 10. In the UK, MPs and those close to power have been among those cashing in while imposing austerity on the rest of the population and our public services. Seeking to replace the income lost in the wake of the expenses scandal of 2009, when it was revealed that parliamentarians were funding often lavish personal items from the public purse (in one case using taxpayer cash to clean their moat), MPs turned to second jobs. [4] The 2022 Netflix series Anatomy of a Scandal, based on a novel of the same name by Sarah Vaughan, used the Bullingdon Club as inspiration for the fictional club featured within the story. The fictional club is known as 'the Libertines'. After all, not many of us have benefited from the same unearned privileges as its principal characters. Not many of us went to Eton and on to the exclusive champagne-quaffing Bullingdon Club at Oxford. Not many have progressed with effortless arrogance into top positions in Westminster, Whitehall and the City.

Michael Kerr, 13th Marquess of Lothian (1945–), Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party (2001–2005) and Chairman of the Conservative Party (1998–2001) [64]

That we allowed that tendency to trash restaurants to take power and trash the country may reveal more about our repressed sense of revelry and riot than we care to admitIn the humdrum age of robo-politicians, technocrats and wonks, Johnson stood out as vivid and real. Like Trump, he provided a kind of personal authenticity against the calculation, caution and double-speak of standard political output. His former chief advisor Dominic Cummings might now characterise him as a crazy “trolley”, careening around the corridors of power. But Cummings must have known this cultivated chaos was seen by many as a breath of fresh air and was a big factor in the unexpectedly large Conservative majority in 2019 that Cummings helped craft. a b "Oration by the demitting Proctors and Assessor" (PDF). Oxford University Gazette. No.Supplement (2) to No. 4876. p.880. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 June 2011 . Retrieved 5 November 2009. I received help from Thames Valley Police on two occasions. My first case (in my first week in office) was the Bullingdon Club — I think the Clerk to the Proctors gave it to me as a test. I received a report that some students had taken habitually to the drunken braying of 'We are the Bullingdon' at 3 a.m. from a house not far from the Phoenix Cinema. But the transcript of what they called the wife of the neighbour who went to ask them to be quiet was written in language that is not usually printed. Their college was identified, but the Bullingdon Club turns out not to be a registered University society. Nor was the abuse uttered on University premises. So after conferring with the Proctors' Officers, I thought that an ASBO might concentrate the minds of those concerned. I referred the matter to the Police who did mention the word ASBO before awarding the members of the Club an ABC — an Anti Social Behaviour Contract that would magically and automatically turn into an ASBO if provoked within six months. So I am pleased to say that, except perhaps at the highest level of national politics, the Bullingdon Club this year has been quiescent. 25 March 2009 Baker, Paddy (12 September 2016). "Oxford's Bullingdon Club is facing extinction". The Tab . Retrieved 9 October 2018.