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'Truly shocking' that the private-school educated and affluent middle class still run Britain, says Sir John Major
Dominance of private-school educated elite in "upper echelons" of British public life is "truly shocking", Sir John Major says
State school educated John Major with David Cameron, who went to Eton
The dominance of a private-school educated elite and well-heeled middle class in the "upper echelons" of public life in Britain is "truly shocking", Sir John Major has said.
The former Conservative Prime Minister said he was appalled that "every single sphere of British influence" in society is dominated by men and women who went to private school or who are from the "affluent middle class"
More than half of the Cabinet, including David Cameron, the Prime Minister, George Osborne, the Chancellor, and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, are thought to have gone to private school and are independently very wealthy.
In the speech to Tory party grassroots activists on Friday evening, Sir John - who went to a grammar school in south London and left with three O-Levels - said: "In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me from my background, I find that truly shocking."
Sir John blamed this "collapse in social mobility" on Labour, which despite Ed Miliband's "absurd mantra to be the one-nation party they left a Victorian divide between stagnation and aspiration".
But the comments will be seen as a challenge to the Eton-educated Mr Cameron who has faced repeated criticism for surrounding himself with advisers and ministers from a similar background and failing
In the speech to South Norfolk Conservative Association's annual dinner on Friday evening, Sir John also said:
- the Government should help pensioners who have saved carefully for their retirement and are being punished by "cripplingly unfair" low interest rates
- the Bank of England ought to return interest rates to "normal levels, say three to five per cent", so that society treats "the saver as fairly as it treats the debtor".
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Tory party members were right to feel "unsettled" by the Coalition's decision to legalise same sex marriage, but activists have to move with the times.
- the Conservative leadership should to pull their punches on the United Kingdom Independence Party, pointing out that "many of the Ukip supporters are patriotic Britons who fear their country is changing" and will come back to the Tory party.
Similar concerns about social mobility were voiced by Michael Gove, the Education secretary who went to state school, last year, but they will have extra resonance because of his role as a party grandee and former Tory Prime Minister.
Sir John said: "I remember enough of my past to be outraged on behalf of the people abandoned when social mobility is lost."
He continued: "Our education system should help children out of the circumstances in which they were born, not lock them into the circumstances in which they were born.
"We need them to fly as high as their luck, their ability and their sheer hard graft can actually take them. And it isn't going to happen magically."
Turning to the Conservatives' prospects at the 2015 general election, Sir John said that if the party decided to "shrink into our comfort zone we will not win General Elections - the core vote cannot deliver a general election majority".
The Bullingdon Boys rule ...........no wonder they are out of touch.............