like the queen this thread will never die: in which we ALL resign (ourselves to disgusting miseries to post-boris politics 2022)

i assume that means that Rishi also read this book, which tbf, I remember being a banger
https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1410436506l/8422114.jpg

co-assimilation: your expertise in tea

big bargain-basement Adam Curtis energy on Louis Goodall’s explainer here!

For the second time in as many months, a new Prime Minister was ushered through the famous front door of 10 Downing Street.@lewis_goodall was there to explain what Rishi Sunak really meant during his inaugural speech as PM.

Head to @GlobalPlayer for on UK politics... 📱 pic.twitter.com/bnrvEHcZ05

— The News Agents (@TheNewsAgents) October 25, 2022

_I don't think marrying into wealth matters as much as your upbringing._

Matters in what way? I'm sorry if I'm being obtuse, but I don't get why it would matter if Sunak actually had been poor and been given a full scholarship to boarding school. That would mean what exactly? What insight or perspective on him would that provide? Like, it seems to me he was at least middle class and made all the right moves to join the upper class...now what?

both a nephew and niece of mine were extremely bright and from a single parent and extremely poor family. They both got scholarships to a fee paying grammar school. One of them is a professor now who did some research work on Alzheimer's and was doing alright for a few years, but now he's struggling. The other, she's working in Tescos and couldn't afford to go to university. None of this shit happens to people like Rishi.

yeah sorry, gyac, I was overstating things to try and prompt youn to elaborate on what they found significant about that one NYT paragraph. I do think the facts of Sunak's socioeconomic class, racial identity, education, work history, religion, gender, sexuality, etc. are all salient in various ways.

matters in terms of how relatable you are to the common people

I should have put common people in quotes. I was thinking of a Pulp song.

ah ok thanks, I think I get it now (though I don't know how relatable you think he is, but maybe that doesn't matter)

and fwiw, I certainly don't understand the intricacies of the British class system either, but my parents imprinted the general rigidity of that system on me at a young age by telling me stories about how low their chances of success were there, which precipitated their moving to the US according to them, due to their impoverished upbringings and having the wrong accents

but less snarkily in terms of your values if one can even speak of that

The British class system does not seem remotely intricate to me. You go to Winchester School, or Eton, or wherever, then on to Oxbridge, and you are guaranteed access to the best, most powerful, most influential careers in the country if you want it. You're set up to run the country - politics, civil service, the media, the judiciary, the military etc. Seems pretty simple to me.

That's why Rishi Sunak's parents paid for him to go to Winchester.

yeah sorry, gyac, I was overstating things to try and prompt youn to elaborate on what they found significant about that one NYT paragraph. I do think the facts of Sunak's socioeconomic class, racial identity, education, work history, religion, gender, sexuality, etc. are all salient in various ways.

From that Lewis Goddall thread it looks like Johnson is back in all but name. Reckon he won't be that slick in fronting the operation. Lack of experience will also undo Sunak, at which some in that cabinet will turn on him.

ah ok thanks, I think I get it now (though I don't know how relatable you think he is, but maybe that doesn't matter)

The British class system does not seem remotely intricate to me. You go to Winchester School, or Eton, or wherever, then on to Oxbridge, and you are guaranteed access to the best, most powerful, most influential careers in the country _if you want it_. You're set up to run the country - politics, civil service, the media, the judiciary, the military etc. Seems pretty simple to me.

The other thing about Sunak is that he is very very right wing. As the previous leadership contest progressed and it was obvious he couldn't beat Truss he got more and more right wing.

Yeah it was fun seeing the Ben Judah type shit for brains takes about sensibles (the adults are back pt 700) & then he reinstalls the swivel eyed nazi home sec

(which tbh feels like p effective trolling of all the liberal “victory” laps after the tofu thing)

fwiw winchester is considered the most academically rigorous public school (by people who went to public school, many of whom treat "clever" as an insult).

I cannot stop thinking about Suella Braverman’s wedding photos pic.twitter.com/HbnIDIZh11

— Hannah Williams (@flamingnora) October 25, 2022

is it SUE-ELLA? SWAY-ya? SOO-la? yank wants to know, srsly, tho sorry

she was named after Sue Ellen Ewing in Dallas

‘So my name is actually Sue-Ellen, because my mum was a fan of Dallas and thought this would be a great name for her daughter. I’ve been plagued ever since.

‘But my primary school teachers didn’t like the hyphen. So they came up with “Suella” on my little tag for my coat and that stuck.’

She doesn't appear to know anyone under 70. Unsurprising, really.

thx it took me a minute to decide that was likely.

instinct was my bad bad spanish tho, and it is very sticky on synapses, had to go there.

She should consider SWAY-ya, rly. oh shit, that might mean something i guess

even her bald, old looking husband looks in his late 50's (he is younger than me, lol)

Things I, as an outsider, feel are confusing about the British class system:

a) The insistence on calling upper class people "middle class", thus conflating very well off people with people who are just above the working class in terms of financial security

b) The discourse around the cultural component of class - I understand your lived experience doesn't vanish into thin air once you graduate into making a bit more money but there's so many fucking millionaires in this country who say they're working class. Don't think people would put it like that elsewhere - you'd still have salt of the earth posturing, but millionaires in Portugal trying to do this would talk about having come from the working class and made a name for themselves, not claiming to actually be working class currently.

Sorry if these points seem disingenous. It often feels to me like much as the UK is accused of being obsessed about class so much of the chat around it feels straight up designed to obfuscate the material conditions of class.

nah there's a lot of complicated stuff that doesn't get thought thru in general conversation, or maybe even theorised that much

you get a lot of edge cases at the upper limit of working class/lower limit of middle class - shopkeepers, "skilled" manual workers, trades, nurses, coppers, all sorts

imo a classical marxist conception of proletarian probably incorporates a majority of people who consider themselves middle class in 21st century UK which doesn't help either

there's convos to be had and self-analysis to be done and i only think it's an issue when people make sweeping statements, or try to exclude somebody's class experience based on arbitrary markers, or just plain cosplays being working class cos they think we're fucking stupid

example of arbitrary markers - i generally had no concept of my class background until i attended university and met a bunch of people with vastly different backgrounds and experiences to my own. and i still remember the time somebody told me i couldn't be working class simply by dint of being at university. so sometimes the chips get carved deep into your shoulders

but it might be better to use another thread if we're gonna have an involved conversation about this. i don't think i have lots to add except that shit is complex and fraught with a lack of honesty

one interesting thing abt this (inc.a minor correction downthread) is actually how consistent it is across c.80 years (also lol eden premiership vmic)

🚨 PRIVATE EDUCATION IN THE NEW CABINET 🚨

The new Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has appointed his cabinet -

🔵 65% attended a private school (vs ~7% of the UK population)
🔵 35% went through a pipeline from private school to Oxford or Cambridge University #reshuffle pic.twitter.com/GFheJSZC6A

— The Sutton Trust (@suttontrust) October 26, 2022

i've come to the conclusion over time that banning private education would be one of the most cost effective radical acts any elected government could carry out

(i wd quickly add that while c.7% may indeed attend a private school countrywide, the sliver of this that attends a private school delivering anything like the full access effect we're discussing is distinctly smaller. the gradient of private schools "good" down to "genuinely bad" is also sharp (tho probably not as sharp as it was back in st trinians times, when that 7% would i think be on the small side). it's not much use merely to have attended A.N.Other private schools: to feel the benefit in question it will need to be one from a quite select subset of same)

xps the main reason we call some rich people middle class is that we still have an actual aristocracy but it gets a little muddled with aristos doing capitalist shit and new money types who might be richer than them but are excluded from certain old boys networks or whatever. I don't know how it all works

the suspicion about obfuscation of material conditions is absolutely correct though. the same fucking people who spent the 90s/00s mocking and attacking anyone who mentioned class for being out of touch extremists who were envious of success are now the ones leaning hardest into this class authenticity policing stuff which is entirely based on cultural signifiers detached from any materiality. such that st george's flag waving business owners somehow become more authentically working class than the migrant workers they exploit. and actual class politics is still met with utter hostility

i appreciate the picture's more complicated than that mark and i think our entire education system needs blowing up and starting again, but the simplest line to draw to take that element of privilege out of the system would be a ban on private education i think. i know that would leave a lot of knots to be worked out

yes i shd have said xp: it wasn't posted to push back against yr point at all NV, just to open up the internals of that 7% (since i think the relevant percentage in terms of this very specific issue is in fact even smaller)

as to yr proposed ban of private education, i entirely agree

it's a fair point, like looking at the rise of university students without accounting for Oxbridge as the dominant factor in high office

i do sometimes wonder if a drive against private education could partly be built from the fact that much of its down-tier operation is actually incredibly terrible and most ppl paying for it are being ripped off

but if they hired me to fashion messages and wedge issues for my kind of politics it wd simply mean even more ppl saying "watdafuk he on abt now"

i feel like - no memory just vibes as per usual - when Labour in opposition has floated anti private education policy the backlash from the electorate as a whole has not been significant? removing private education kinda feels achievable to me, probly right up to the point where it actually isn't lol

of course the muddy waters of class and the broader snobbery that engenders are percolated right thru the whole education system, hence league tables and local biases towards "good" and "bad" schools. the notion of education to "better yourself" feels just as soaked into the working class left as anywhere else to me and probably has been since at least when Dickie Attenborough did that film about being an oik in a brave new meritocracy

the chapter on class in Kate Fox's "Watching The English" is a good primer on the way it works here, which is not the same as in other countries or in Marxist theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guinea_Pig_(film)

think stuff like this was directly responsible for Powell and Pressburger losing their fucking minds

what does "35% went through a pipeline from private school to Oxford or Cambridge University" mean in that tweet up there? (the pipeline bit)

in general it means there's that a well established well-trod route: viz in this case possibly from a specific set of such schools who select and steer some pupils towards this route, to a specific set of university subjects studied (mainly PPE, to a specific set of SPAD-hiring outcomes?

(truer answer: i don't actually know and ^^^is a guess)

I hope you enjoyed PMQs because these people deliberately put the country through seven years of incredible, idiotic shenanigans just so they could have this back: two unfunny professional haircuts in suits trying to out-wanker each other to entertain the worst people in Britain. pic.twitter.com/NAvXNowN6p

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) October 26, 2022

a) The insistence on calling upper class people "middle class", thus conflating very well off people with people who are just above the working class in terms of financial security

It would totally make sense to split the population into thirds by wealth, or at least have the top 10% be upper class or something. But yeah, Britain is still wary of using the term "upper class" for anyone but those with aristocratic connections. There is a grey area with very posh people who don't seem to be connected to a hereditary title. And of course British people don't agree among themselves about class labels.

I think the distinctions, though they may once have mattered, are increasingly obfuscatory to how wealth and power now operate

There’s the 1% and there’s the rest of us imo

the top tier upper/middle division tends to come down to ownership of land, mostly pre Industrial Revolution/late 18th century

like everything else in this soup it's nonsenical up to the point where it does actually tell you something about manners/attitudes/politics/self ID

the 18th century bourgeoisie marrying itself to the landed aristos is a big part of the industrial revolution because both sides had stuff to gain

that division is less important 200-odd years later of course EXCEPT TO THE KIND OF PEOPLE TO WHOM ITS ACTUALLY STILL REALLY IMPORTANT

but yes that wasn't an argument with you Trace, most difference it might make to me is order of the guillotine/gulag/re-education queue, which ultimately will be down to the queuers themselves