Some Prime Ministers did not have degrees?!

I'm not convinced that Wilson was below them. His education was about the same, but the son of a teacher and a chemist was not really quite the same as the children of small business people. Although he was Northern, I would suggest Wilson started out a little above Thatcher and Heath.

Major's allegedly poor background is overstated, not least by him.

Callaghan didn't go to university.

Attlee
Churchill
Eden
Macmillan
Douglas Home

were privately educated:

Wilson
Heath
Callaghan
Thatcher
Major

were not
,

Blair

was privately educated


Brown

was not

Cameron

was privately educated

If the next PM is either Milliband or Theresa May

this issue may well vanish from politics entirely. Blair and Cameron will be seen as the exceptions.

(May did spend two years from 11 to 13 at an obscure independent girls school that then closed).

The main factor would be that vastly fewer people went to university - nothing to do with grade inflation.

I liked John Major. He ran away from the circus to work at a bank.

Funny, isn't it?

Ok, David Cameron is a proper part of the aristocracy, but since 1964 the PMs from "actual" working class backgrounds have all been Tories except for Callaghan. All the Labour ones have generally been middle class professionals of some kind. It was only prior to Wilson that the Tory PMs were landed gentry types.

Mrs T - father was a greengrocer.
Mr Major - father was a circus performer
Ted Heath - father was a carpenter

Blair - father was a barrister
Brown - father was a church minister
Callaghan - father in the Navy
Wilson - father was a scientist

Unless UKIP win the election!!

Oxford leads Cambridge for the line of PMs. Why is that? Could it be because of their PPE degree?

I'm not entirely sure if I'm being honest - actually I'm not sure anyone is. Of the last 10 PMs, Cameron is the only one to have read PPE at university (Brown read Economics only, Blair read Law, Major didn't attend, Thatcher read Chemistry, Callaghan didn't attend, Wilson read Modern History, Home also read Modern History, Macmillan read Honours Moderations) so I'm not sure it's their degree.

I'd harbour a guess that it's something simple like Oxford offered more scholarships or that Oxford, at the time, had a better reputation for Arts subjects whilst Cambridge was more favourable for Sciences. It could just be happen-stance.

Whatever it is, it's very likely the trend will continue as any prospective PM from either party (Osborne, Boris, May, Balls, Cooper, Burnham, Gove) all attended Oxford. The only front-bencher with a decent shout (and would, if I supported Labour, be my pick for leader after May) is Chuka Umunna (who attended Manchester University).

Wilson went up reading history but changed to PPE. Heath also read PPE.

Alan Johnson has no degree.

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Whatever it is, it's very likely the trend will continue as any prospective PM from either party (Osborne, Boris, May, Balls, Cooper, Burnham, Gove) all attended Oxford. The only front-bencher with a decent shout (and would, if I supported Labour, be my pick for leader after May) is Chuka Umunna (who attended Manchester University).

i must object to your vilification of this great man. he put himself in mortal danger in France; you seem to imply that he was larking around playing games and avoiding peril.

here is what really happened:

With the 6th Royal Scots Battalion

On January 5, 1916, he took command of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers battalion of the Ninth Division, currently in reserve just behind the line. It had been involved in the battle of Loos in September and had suffered greatly. When Churchill took over, the battalion had been reduced from 1,000 men to less than 600, including many replacements who hadn't experienced battle. They weren't happy to hear that a fallen politician would be their new colonel.

With typical Churchillian energy, he arranged for their de-lousing and took advantage of their three weeks in reserve to enhance their training. During that time, the men appreciated his lax application of discipline, despite disapproval from his superiors. He arranged sports and concerts. On January 27, the battalion took over its 1,000 yards of front at Ploegsteert, Belgium, known as “Plug Street” to the Tommies. While no offenses were launched in this sector during Churchill's tenure, there was constant shell-fire and forays into no-man's-land. Churchill set up his headquarters in a shell-battered farm behind the trenches. The barn was sandbagged, providing refuge when shells came in.

When the battalion was in the line-- it rotated six days in the trenches and six in immediate reserve-- he and his officers would enter no-man's-land through the barbed wire and visit the forward positions in shell craters to keep an eye on the enemy, yards away. At least one time he came under direct machine gun fire. Also, the farm itself was shelled frequently and the buildings occasionally were hit. One time, a shell landed on the house and a piece of shrapnel hit a lamp's battery holder he was toying with. The shelling at the farm sometimes caused casualties. He constantly inspected the trenches, making sure they were as strong as possible.

Good point about Callaghan (he got a place at Oxford but couldn't afford to attend) - I knew I was forgetting someone.

I've never really understood why whether someone is privately educated or not should matter - it wasn't their fault that they were lucky enough to be in a position where their parents could afford to pay for such. A lot of people spite Cameron for being a 'Tory toff' and favouring his Old Etonian pals but I think it's a bit silly. People should aspire to be able to send their children, or for their children to send their grandchildren, to such excellent schools.

I take issue with those who have been privileged enough to attend private school and then turn around and seek to prevent other children from receiving the same education (cough Tristram Hunt cough).

He and Macdonald are the only two PMs to have ever known real poverty. Lloyd George's mother had no money but there was a wealthy uncle.

NIgel Farage, who went to school in south London at that well-known bastion of the poor and downtrodden, Dulwich College.

I've just been trying to find online (but can't) a rather digging article about Major that I read in a sunday magazine about 5 years ago that questioned his version of his 'poverty history', they had done some research into it and found it all a bit overdone. Didn't C4 do the same thing about 10 years ago? I remember it talking to people who knew his family then and so on.

Basically I think Major uses the poverty thing when it suits him and the Cricketing Gentleman thing when that suits him. They serve similar roles to his dental visits.

First of all, I'm not denigrating him or accusing him of cowardice. I was responding a post that talked about his military service as if he was a regular soldier. He was nothing like that. He was a young gentleman at the top of the aristocracy taking whatever postings he saw fit and acting in them as he wished. I'm also not saying he didn't do well at any of them, just that it is a false view of history to think that he was marvellous in every respect and a model man. He was a man of his class and times and he had quite a few character flaws, he wasn't a saint or even close to one.

The military service you describe, whilst of course to us hard to imagine being in or taking part in, was I'm quite certain pretty run of the mill stuff for WWI and very probably a 'quiet' posting, which if you read any of the large and objective biographies of him, you will discover is what most leading historians think.

you have no idea of the hell of France in WW1. you seem to think Churchill had a cushy job far removed from real fighting. your consciousness is false.

Are you saying that we should ignore class completely in how we think about someone like Cameron? Clearly he is part of a smug, rather self-satisfied clique (the 'Chipping Norton Set') who use their public school and wealthy circle links to 'run the country' and covertly fix policy, not least as we've seen with foreign oligarchs like Rupert Murdoch. Isn't that a matter of concern?

Surely the government of an important country like the UK should be conducted by elected people and not by a hidden, semi-aristocratic, semi-corrupt inner circle of hedge fund managers, bankers, oligarchs and cronies, just because they happened to go to the right schools?

My bottom line - the job of PM (or really any job for that matter) should be filled by whoever is right for the role - regardless of their education, family status, gender, race, wealth, etc. Being 'right' for the job also includes not using the office's powers to advantage your pals.

I've just been trying to find online (but can't) a rather digging article about Major that I read in a sunday magazine about 5 years ago that questioned his version of his 'poverty history', they had done some research into it and found it all a bit overdone. Didn't C4 do the same thing about 10 years ago? I remember it talking to people who knew his family then and so on.

Basically I think Major uses the poverty thing when it suits him and the Cricketing Gentleman thing when that suits him. They serve similar roles to his dental visits.

I think that is unfair because there is no doubt that his parents were successful in the music halls and that later the gnome business was prosperous for a time. There was quite a sharp descent into poverty in the mid 50s.

He was quite clearly uncomfortable with his spin doctors using his past in the 1992 election. There is one party political broadcast where you can almost see him squirming. However the spin doctors were right.

He has become much easier with it since. He has written a history of music halls and their can't be many trades unions who have had the forward to their official history written by the Tory PM son of one of their founder members!