Amigocracia

Can. Privilege. Parties. It's a very small world at the top. Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May, Dominic Cummings, Daniel Hannan, Jacob Rees-Mogg: Whitehall is crawling with old Oxonians. They have debated each other in tutorials, they have faced each other in student elections and they have attended the same dances and black-tie dinners. They are not just colleagues: they are companions, rivals, friends. And, when they left the world of student debates to enter the national scene, they brought their university politics with them. Thirteen of the seventeen post-war British prime ministers studied at Oxford University. In Amigocracy, Simon Kuper examines how the rarefied, privileged atmosphere of this very tight circle of talent -and the friendships and worldviews it created- shaped modern Britain. A damning look at the university clique that has become the majority in the House of Commons that will throw open the doors of Westminster and forever change the way we view UK democracy.