Where even the rich can succeed.

last updated 8 January 2015

United Kingdom

Ben MacintyreLondon Times

We British have finally overcome class snobbery, said Ben Macintyre in the London Times. There was a time, not too long ago, when anyone with a privileged or titled background was automatically excluded from high office. Ever since World War II ushered in a more egalitarian age, a genteel pedigree has been “a serious political liability,” and “Eton” the most insulting of all four-letter words. Having attended that posh boys’ school branded a man forever as an upper-class twit. Etonians are believed to adhere to “a bizarre, quasi-Hasidic dress code” and inhabit a world of “stiff collars, stiffer manners, noses of toffee, and spoons of silver.” Among Labor Party politicians, the prejudice against “toffs,” as those in the upper class are called, is still widespread. But “whether a purely negative association still holds true for the population at large is more uncertain.” Conservatives, at least, have bravely shed the unfair bias, choosing Eton grad David Cameron as their new leader. The intrepid trailblazer has managed to rise to the top of his party—“in spite of” his superior education. “That is surely proof that the old class divisions are slowly becoming irrelevant.”