Has Corbyn dumbed down the Labour Party by purging Oxbridge grads?

We all know that Jezza scraped two E's in his A Levels and could only get into a Poly, but did you know that his support team is almost exclusively red brick, not Oxbridge?

http://new.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/labours-purge-of-oxbridge-intellectuals/

Has Corbyn dumbed down the Labour Party in this (and other) ways?

With all out problems, can Britain really risk electing a leader too stupid to even get into university with a Shadow Cabinet composed of graduates of second tier universities?

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1

ChaoticButterfly

John Major left school without any qualifications.

Britain has already elected such a leader.

NEXT QUESTION

Reply 2

Rat_Bag

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

John Major left school without any qualifications.

Britain has already elected such a leader.

NEXT QUESTION

Too right, and John Major wasn't all that bad

The elitism of the OP is quite stark.

Reply 3

username2165807

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

John Major left school without any qualifications.

Britain has already elected such a leader.

NEXT QUESTION

I swear every time there's a post about labour you're there spouting some trash in caps, man.

Reply 4

A1112787

If you're going from the viewpoint that all universities are second-tier to Oxbridge then you're quite misguided and ill-informed.

Likewise, one does not need to have attended Oxbridge to be a great politician - eg see Churchill, Callaghan, Major, Brown, all of whom were great politicians, if not great PMs.

As to the main theme of this thread, does it really matter? Corbyn is unlikely to lead the party into the next GE; as such anything he does now will be changed in due course.

If I were a Labour supporter, God forbid, I'd be more worried about the fact that the party was just hammered in a GE and has elected a joke of a leader - as opposed to the number of Cantabs and Oxons lining the front benches.

Reply 5

troubadour.

Original post by chocolate hottie

Oxford and Cambridge are no doubt some of the best universities in the world. But to use terminology like that to describe perfectly good universities is bullsh*t. Just because somebody didn't go to Oxbridge doesn't mean that they're not sufficiently competent to run a country. To even suggest that reveals a staggering ignorance of how the education system in this country operates. It can't honestly be said that people like Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper (who did go to Oxbridge) were, at any point in their lives, the best and the brightest this country has to offer.

'too stupid to even get into university' -- Aren't you a jar of honey...

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 6

driftawaay

Good, he should be getting rid of rich toffs who dont even know how much a pint of milk costs.

Reply 7

difeo

Original post by Hydeman

Oxford and Cambridge are no doubt some of the best universities in the world. But to use terminology like that to describe perfectly good universities is bullsh*t. Just because somebody didn't go to Oxbridge doesn't mean that they're not competent to run a country. To even suggest that reveals a staggering ignorance of how the education system in this country operates. It can't honestly be said that people like Ed Miliband or Yvette Cooper were, at any point in their lives, the best and the brightest this country has to offer.

'too stupid to even get into university' -- Aren't you a jar of honey...

"Terminology like that"? Unless you're claiming that non-Oxbridge unis are actually top tier, second tier sounds about right...

Reply 8

troubadour.

Original post by difeo

"Terminology like that"? Unless you're claiming that non-Oxbridge unis are actually top tier, second tier sounds about right...

Unless you're deaf to the tone of the OP, you'll know exactly why I've responded the way I have. 'Second tier', as far as the tone of the OP is concerned, is just a euphemism for 'second rate' and that most UK universities are not.

Reply 9

Gears265

Original post by driftawaay

Good, he should be getting rid of rich toffs who dont even know how much a pint of milk costs.

Boris and Khan didn't even know the price of a train fare

Reply 10

chocolate hottie

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

John Major left school without any qualifications.

Britain has already elected such a leader.

NEXT QUESTION

Some members of Major's Cabinet:

Gummer Cambridge
Lamont Cambridge
Heseltine Oxford
Waldegrave Oxford
Hurd Cambridge
Mellor Cambridge
Patten Oxford

And on and on. Look them up, they are almost all Oxbridge, I got bored listing them...

Reply 11

Bupdeeboowah

Exams and education are not definitive indicators on whether you will succeed. It is the things you do in life which do.

But failing to do anything remotely productive in your life, despite coming from a privileged background, does not convince me that you're bound for success.

Reply 12

chocolate hottie

There are loads of Oxbridge grads in the PLP. They just don't support Corbyn. (Or like Charlie Falconer and Burnham they are openly contemptuous in the former case and privately in the second).

Liz Kendall went to Cambridge and Yvette Cooper took a top first at Oxford. They won't serve under him.

Why, Corbynistas? Why?

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 13

Rat_Bag

Original post by chocolate hottie

I just read the article and did some background reading on the current shadow cabinet

Following members of Corbyn's shadow cabinet who are Oxbridge graduates
Angela Eagle, Buisness, Innovate and Skills
Charles Falconer, Justice
Andy Burnham, Home Secretary
Lucy Powell, Educate
Maria Eagle, Defence
Chris Bryant, House of Commons
Lilian Greenwood, Transport
Diane Abbott, International Development
Nia Griffith, Wales
John Healy, Housing and Planning

So where on earth is the OP getting the idea that Corbyn's "support team" are almost exclusively non-Oxbridge, when a third of them are?

This just smacks me as the usual drip drip partisan poison that we're going to see against Corbyn over the next 4 and a half years. And just to be clear, I can't stand the views of the man and am ardently anti-socialist: I just think if you are going to pull punches on someone, they should be legitimate.

Reply 14

ChaoticButterfly

Original post by CloakedSpartan

I swear every time there's a post about labour you're there spouting some trash in caps, man.

I hardly ever use caps... OP is just as much a broken record as I am if that is the case.

I'm not particularly fond of labour. I just dislike the Tory party even more and feel the need to defend labour from such accusations as in the OP. Accusations that are so freaking biased and hypocritical that the Tory party are often guilty of the slight being aimed at labour.

Corbyn has no academic credentials, Tories had a Priminister with no olevels. Corbyn has communist friends. Cameron and Osborne suck up to an actual communist regime, give them levels of control over our nuclear industry. Preside over and say nothing when our police arrest an old Tienanmen Square square massacre survivor protesting against the human rights abusing tyrannical regime that we are hosting. Police who then raid the old guys home and his wife gets upset as it brings back memory of living in a communist police state.

Corbyn is a threat to your family. Cameron would happily do nothing whilst one of your family members are going to be tortured and/or killed by a despotic regime that our are allies and business partners. A regime where we do deals with to get on human rights councils, mkaing a mockery of human rights. They use anti-EU sentiment to attack European Convention of Human. Maybe something they admire with their communist friends is their stance on concepts such as human rights.

I could go on...

People like the OP don't have objective principles with which they use to filter the world through(or they do but see below). They just hate the labour parties gut's, or some conceptualization of a left wing. That's it. That is their world view. They are either ignorant hypocrites that don;t realize they are doing it or cynically doing it like some tabloid owner when really they now better.

It;s not that they don't like labour, it';s that they are complete hypocrites. It wouldn't be so bad if they were just horrible internet trolls, but it resembles a large chunk of the media coverage of this country.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 15

username1494226

I think the country is fed up with incompetent Oxbridge graduates if I am being honest. What idiot thought that a History graduate could be a Chancellor? Don't make me laugh. The problem with the political class today is that they're all lifelong politicians who are nothing but parasites who think they're better than anyone else. Oxbridge bred them to be like that along with a myriad of other things. Just because you went to Oxbridge doesn't even say you're an intelligent individual(it depends on what you studied and intelligence is quite a subjective thing). Whilst Corbyn may not be an academic by any means, he's used his intelligence and cunning to stay elected as an MP for 3 decades and is now the leader of a political party. I would never vote Corbyn because I'm a conservative leaning person but you can't just go about calling Corbyn an idiot just because he didn't go to Oxbridge. He can be an idiot for other reasons(evidenced by his extremely socialist policy but you don't have to do a degree to understand politics well). That's my two cents. I'm not trying to demonise Oxbridge students, I'm just sick of the vocal minority amongst them who profess utmost superiority over everyone else. Really not the case if they come out and graduate and don't even use the degree.

Reply 16

Rat_Bag

Original post by chocolate hottie

Also, since the OP is a supporter of UKIP (right?), care to share how many of the top tier UKIP politicians are Oxbridge graduates?

Nigel Farage: didn't go to university
Paul Nuttall: University of Edge Hill and John Hope University
Douglas Carswell MP: University of East Anglia
Lord Pearson: didn't go to university
David McNary, NI Assembly: didn't go to university

Had to go digging. Finally found 4 Oxbridge graduates from current tranche of 22 MEP. Though sadly for the OP, the biggest cohort was those that didn't go to university, followed by universities he/she would sneer at. There were also two Lords who were Oxbridge graduates.

Having been to university doesn't determine someone's suitability to govern, less so the type of university

Reply 17

ChaoticButterfly

Original post by A1112787

Those are labour. Therefore they were idiots. Don't you get it?

This is about as complicated as this gets.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 18

troubadour.

Original post by Rat_Bag

PRSOM. :3

Reply 19

troubadour.

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

Corbyn has no academic credentials, Tories had a Priminister with no olevels.

I'm in agreement with you on this but just to be a pedant: John Major left school with three O Levels and acquired another three later in life, I believe.