Common People

‘Complete rubbish!’ Henry (not his real name) – a recently retired corporate lawyer – was visibly offended. For nearly two hours, he had talked amiably about his successful career in the City. But now, fairly instantly, the atmosphere had changed. We had just asked him a question we put to nearly a hundred and fifty people we interviewed for our book, Born to Rule: ‘Do you consider yourself a member of the British elite?’ The frustration in his response was palpable: “I consider myself to have been a successful professional. I don’t consider that elite…This belief that there is an elite that can dominate society, I have considerable doubts about that.”

But something felt a little incongruous about Henry’s outrage. Maybe it was that we were sitting in the ‘drawing room’ of his seven-bedroom townhouse in Bloomsbury, or that we knew his wealth placed him squarely among the top 1 per cent. Maybe it was the huge self-portrait of him that hung opposite us as we talked. Or maybe it was something about Henry’s background and life trajectory. His father held a very senior post in the civil service, as did his grandfather. He went to one of Britain’s most elite schools. He attended Oxford. And for more than 30 year she had been a senior partner at a ‘magic circle’ law firm.

Or maybe it was that as we spoke, and despite his protestations otherwise, it became abundantly clear that Henry was hugely influential. His personal networks include the governor of the Bank of England and a former chancellor of the Exchequer, and he spoke of various times in his career when he had levered his position to lobby ministers. To us, Henry seemed the embodiment of the British elite – both in origin and destination. But clearly, and like the vast majority of the 150 people we interviewed, this is not how Henry saw himself.

Some of this is perhaps understandable. After all, ‘the elite’ are frequently invoked but rarely defined. Our work tried to address this fuzziness. Our definition of the British elite was rooted in Who’s Who – Britain’s longstanding catalogue of ‘influential and noteworthy’ individuals. For over 125 years, Who’s Who has captured a tiny (0.05 per cent of the UK population) public-facing elite based on those who have reached positions of national influence. MPs, peers, judges, ambassadors, FTSE100 CEOs, national newspaper editors and poet laureates are all included by virtue of their office.

But Henry wasn’t just disavowing ‘eliteness’. He was at pains to stress his ordinariness. He rejected the idea that privilege had had any significant role in his success, talked up his working-class ancestors, belittled his influence, and generally presented himself as an exemplar of amore meritocratic era in Britain.

Henry was not alone. Many of the people we inter-viewed mentioned some aspects of their upbringing but omitted others. They downplayed childhood experiences that might signal privilege, stressed the inexpensive nature of their private schooling, the periods of economic uncertainty their family had faced, or the working-class struggle of their grandparents. And it was telling that, when we surveyed over 3,000 entrants of Who’s Who, we found that 43 per cent of those who told us they came from working-class backgrounds had actually grown up with parents in solidly middle-class professions.

Today’s elite may see itself as more meritocratic and down-to-earth, but do its claims of progressive social change stand up? The answer, our research suggests, is a resounding no. In fact, we show that there is a troubling disconnect between how elites like Henry seek to present themselves and what we find when we carefully analyse patterns of elite recruitment among the 125,000 WHO’s Who entrants who have shaped Britain since the turn of the 20th century.

Some of our statistics in this regard are fairly startling. It has been true since the 1890s that if you hail from the top 1 per cent of the wealth distribution you are about 20times more likely to reach the British elite than others of your age. Similarly, even after a notable decline in their power, the alumni of the ‘Clarendon schools’ – our nine most elite private schools, including Eton, Harrow and Winchester – are still, today, 52 times more likely to reach the British elite than those who attend any other type of school. These schools may educate less than 0.2 per cent of all UK schoolchildren, but they have maintained a staggering hold over the political establishment over the past century – educating 67 per cent of all prime ministers and 53 per cent of the holders of the ‘great offices of state’ (PMs plus home secretaries, foreign secretaries and chancellors). And the most recent Oxbridge graduates for whom we have reliable data – that is, those born in the 1960s and early 1970s – were over 250 times more likely to reach the British elite than others born at the same time who did not attend university.

This does not mean that the British elite is a closed shop. Wealth, private schooling, and Oxbridge may provide a gilded pathway, but none are a guarantee of success. There have also been other important changes. Thirty-five per cent of new elites are now women (although our interviews underline the misogyny most have faced in reaching their positions) and there is modest progress on racial diversity (although only 1.5 per cent of the current elite are Black or Asian). Notwithstanding these changes, we think patterns of elite reproduction remain deeply concerning.

Certainly our findings provide a sobering corrective to the narrative that Britain is becoming, even slowly, a meritocracy. This really matters. In recent years, key policymakers like the Social Mobility Commission have shifted their focus away from elites and advocated for an emphasis on social mobility into lower tiers of the labour market. We would not dispute the need for a broader focus, but our research underlines how pivotal it is that we continue to tackle enduring social exclusivity at the very top. Ignoring it leaves the most influential individuals dangerously unmoored from public scrutiny.

The reality of persistent elite reproduction also brings us back to the idea of ordinariness. If claims to ordinariness do not reflect a meaningful opening up within the British elite, then what exactly do they amount to? Our key argument is that there is a symbolic market for ordinariness in contemporary Britain. We ran a number of experiments where we asked the British public to rate imaginary elites, varying details about their background in one set of profiles, and details about their taste and lifestyle in the other, but keeping the rest of the profile the same. Strikingly, the public consistently uprated elites who they thought came from humble backgrounds or who they saw as culturally down-to-earth, viewing them as more relatable, intelligent, hard-working, even competent. Ordinariness, in other words, represents a rich form of cultural currency.

Uncovering persistent patterns in who reaches the top, then, is not just about puncturing elite claims to ordinariness. It also tells us something fundamental about the elites we get – and specifically how they think and behave. Our survey of current members of Who’s Who shows that elites drawn from privileged backgrounds have distinct positions on many of the key issues of our times. Notably, they tilt significantly to the right compared to other elites. They are less likely to think we should increase taxes on the rich, less likely to prioritise reducing poverty, and less likely to think Britain is a racist country. Elites from working-class backgrounds orient the other way – they tilt to the economic left and are more culturally progressive. Moreover, women and elites of colour also think differently. Women are notably more progressive politically, whereas elites of colour are more radical on the need to address problems of racism and promote decolonial thinking.

Of course, attitudes do not necessarily translate into action. Over 40 per cent of the current Labour cabinet are from working-class backgrounds (versus 7 per cent in the last Tory cabinet) but it is possible that a more middle-class Labour cabinet would also have removed the two-child limit, introduced the Renter’s Rights Act, and implemented the Employment Rights Act. Despite this ambiguity, our findings suggest that the stakes in tackling elite reproduction are not just about equality of opportunity. More fundamentally, they are about the sort of politics we want.

While it would be naïve to assume that greater diversity will automatically produce a radical ideological reorientation of the British elite, there are clearly ways in which women, working class people, and people of colour think differently from the affluent white men who have historically dominated the British elite. Indeed, the recent influx of historically marginalised groups appears to have produced a period of intra-elite conflict over gender, race, and the legacy of empire, precisely because these new elites do not accept the old consensus. Continuing to open up Britain’s elite, then, is worthwhile. Over time, it may eventually create a critical mass able and willing to disrupt the entrenched class reproduction that has dominated Britain for centuries.

Image credit: JD Photography via pexels