Eton

‘Lobbying,’ writes William Waldegrave in this extraordinary memoir, ‘takes many forms.’ But he has surely reported a variant hitherto unrecorded in the annals of politics. The Cardinal Archbishop of Cardiff (‘splendidly robed and well supported by priests and other attendants’) had come to lobby him (then an education minister) against the closure of a Catholic teacher-training college. After discussion the archbishop suggested their respective entourages leave the room. Face to face and alone with Waldegrave, the archbishop told him he had a distinguished 16th-century ancestor, who was a candidate for beatification. The unspoken implication was left hanging. ‘The Roman Catholic college duly closed,’ adds Waldegrave, ‘and I heard no more

Chris Bryant found time to congratulate Eddie Redmayne on his best actor Oscar today despite previously claiming that British culture should not be dominated by privately educated actors of Redmayne’s ilk. While the shadow culture minister’s support for the Old Etonian may be lukewarm at best, The Theory of Everything actor can at least count on the constant support of his fellow alumni. Lord Charlie Brocket has come out to congratulate Redmayne on his win. The peer, who was jailed for an insurance scam in the 1990s, claims that Redmayne’s success will hopefully lead the way for more Old Etonian actors. ‘From a parents’ point of view, when you’ve put them through an Eton education

Much has been made of Eddie Redmayne’s education at Eton after Chris Bryant claimed that British culture should not be dominated by public schoolboys like The Theory of Everything actor. Mr Steerpike hopes that the Labour MP gave tonight’s Baftas a miss for his own sake, as alumni from Britain’s two most prestigious private schools battled it out in the Best Actor category. Redmayne was pitted against Benedict Cumberbatch, who attended Harrow. Alas Cumberbatch’s efforts as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game were not enough to clinch him victory. It was the 33-year-old Old Etonian who came up trumps, taking home the Best Actor award for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. Hawking was

Class war. It’s not very classy, is it? But it’s Labour’s big thing at the moment, the class-of-politicians-crisis, which it thinks works well with the other crisis facing hardworking families up and down the country that the party likes to talk about, and allows Ed Miliband to duck awkward things like responding to the Budget. He and his henchmen have spent the past week and a half talking as much about Etonians as they have pensioners. On Tuesday, Rachel Reeves had her go, banging on about rich Tories buying Lamborghinis. Ed Balls was the follow-up act on Wednesday (having already had a first shot last week with his jokes about

Tory MPs from less privileged backgrounds than their leader have developed a fun new game to play in the members’ tea room: drawing up definitive rankings of Polite Old Etonians and Rude Old Etonians. I hear that the polite list includes Jesse Norman, Zac Goldsmith and Jacob Rees Mogg, while the rude list features not only the PM but his chief whip Sir George Young, who is accused of ‘arrogance’. Apparently Sir George doesn’t say hello to people in the corridor. Keen bean Rory Stewart is also on the rude list: ‘People don’t mind ambition in parliament, but vaulting Shakespearean ambition is a bit of a turn off,’ whispers one

Are voters really concerned about how many Old Etonians David Cameron surrounds himself with? Judging by the cutting remarks from Michael Gove and Sayeeda Warsi it matters a lot, but opinion polling tells a slightly different, more troubling tale about how people feel about the ‘political class’. On the Eton question, YouGov recently carried out a poll asking which characteristics they found most unsuitable for a ‘leading politician’. When asked to choose three or four negative qualities, 38 per cent stated that an MP who went to Eton and doesn’t ‘understand how normal people live’ is unsuitable: According to the polling, having been schooled at Eton is judged as a

Class never quite goes away as an issue for the Tories, for the simple and sufficient reason that it matters. Lately it was Michael Gove stating the obvious, that the Prime Minister mixes mostly with people with backgrounds like his own…a perfectly human impulse, but not a good look, the Old Etonian coterie. Now David Davis has observed (on the radio) over the weekend, as John Major did last year, that it’s much harder than it was when he was growing up for a working class boy to get ahead in the world. Mr Davis is a product of a Tooting grammar school, a route that’s now closed, but it wasn’t just

If Grant Shapps and John Major gave a speech but no journalists were there to cover it, did it really happen? That’s what happened today. The Tories invited one pooled camera into their headquarters to see the former prime minister stand next to the party chairman in a belated attempt to prove that at least two senior Tories did not go to Eton. Loyal MPs and spinners delivered the speech line-by-line on Twitter; but the only interesting bits were briefed out to the Daily Mail last night. Apparently, Sir John could only afford half an hour off from watching cricket, so there was no time for a Q&A – nothing