‘I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University,’ said William F. Buckley Jr, the American conservative writer. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party must be hoping British voters agree.
Under Corbyn, the Labour party — once the clever party — has had a brain transplant. It’s out with the Oxbridge and Harvard graduates with first-class degrees; in with the red-brick university graduates.
Or, in Corbyn’s case, a non-graduate. Corbyn got two Es at A-level at Adams’ Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire. He did a year of trade union studies at the North London Polytechnic before dropping out. Corbyn is the first Labour leader not to go to university since James Callaghan — and Callaghan only didn’t go because his family, unlike the prosperous Corbyns, couldn’t afford it.
Corbyn, perhaps because of his low-grade education, has largely replaced the Oxbridge elite — who ran the Labour party under Ed Miliband — with red-brick alumni.
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