Derision met Labour when news emerged that more than half of its prospective parliamentary candidates are former special advisers, party workers, researchers, lobbyists or ex-MPs.
Ed Miliband (PPE, Corpus Christi College, Oxford) heralded a ‘new politics’ when he took over the party; yet his top team embodies the political class: Ed Balls (PPE, Keble College, Oxford), his wife Yvette Cooper (PPE, Balliol College, Oxford); Angela Eagle (PPE, St John’s College, Oxford) and her sister Maria Eagle (PPE, Pembroke College, Oxford). Some Labour frontbenchers who didn’t go to Oxford worked as Special Advisers for the last Labour government; many others did both.
Most of us, of course, have done neither. There is a divide between the rulers and the ruled. Here are the wise words of a Dr Breslin, Director of Breslin Public Policy:
‘The emergence of what might be termed the “spad-ocracy” confirms the absence of meritocracy and enshrines an inequality of access and influence at the heart of our politics; it is bad for democracy.
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