This week, David Cameron has appointed yet another
Etonian to his inner circle. He has made
Jo Johnson, brother of Boris, the head of the Downing Street policy unit.
Jo Johnson may well be a very able man but his
appointment highlights the fact that Cameron relies for advice on people
(mostly men) from a strikingly narrow demographic. Almost all Cameron’s inner
circle comes from the 7% of the population that is privately educated and many
of the key people come from one single school, Eton.
Etonians at the heart of government include Cameron; Jo
Johnson; Oliver Letwin, Cabinet Minister with policy oversight; Sir George
Young, Chief Whip; Ed Llewellyn, Cameron’s chief of staff; Rupert Harrison, George
Osborne’s chief adviser and Jesse Norman, an influential MP just appointed to a
new policy board.
In November last year, Dame Helen Ghosh, former top civil
servant at the Home Office publicly attacked Cameron’s “Old Etonian clique” of advisers. She highlighted the negative
impact on women’s ability to influence policy at the highest level. The same negative
impact would apply to other groups, including much of the middle class - and the
poor, ethnic minorities and many others.
The problem with too many Etonians is that identified in
the third category of Donald Rumsfeld’s well known statement in 2002: -
“There
are known knowns; there are things we know that we know
There
are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know
But
there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don’t
know.”
However clever or well-intentioned they may or may not be,
a group of advisers as narrow as the one around Cameron will always lack knowledge
of the reality of the lives of most people in the country. They do not know what
questions to ask. They do not know what they do not know.
It appears that Cameron thinks that he does not need to bring
into his inner circle people with different life experiences. The idea may seem
as outlandish to him as inviting a native to advise them would have seemed to
the members of the Raj.
A rich and privileged background, combined with some wisdom,
is potentially a great advantage for someone who wants to fight for social
justice. Franklin Delano Roosevelt came from a far wealthier and more privileged
background than Cameron and he was one of the greatest progressive politicians
of the last century. Unlike Cameron, he
knew that his life experiences meant there were a great many things he did not
know and so he gathered around him advisers who either knew these things or
knew what questions to ask.
George Orwell was an old Etonian. He immersed himself in
life experiences far removed from his upbringing. His writing and campaigning
for democracy and socialism will be remembered long after Cameron is forgotten.
If Cameron was wise he would surround himself with
advisers that more closely represented the country he is governing. Sadly, all
his expensive education has failed to furnish him with much wisdom.
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