http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... on-cabinet



, I didn't know that was one of the origins for that phrase.

It is hardly representative, but the Blairs cabinet was not much better. They had disproportionately more public schoolboys in the cabinet than are generally.

It would appear to be a problem inherent to the rise of career politicians, many of whom have followed the same or very similar paths through the education system. IIRC a large number or cabinet ministers (on both sides) studied politics with something at Oxford.

We have lost or are steadily losing the diversity of background that a healthy (or healthier) democracy needs if it's actually going to reasonably reflect the population. How to reverse the decline, that's the real question.

PPE - philosophy, politics and economics. A degree generally regarded as being utterly useless for anything other than being a politician.


It would be tricky, admittedly. I'd start by requiring any minister of state to have at least a degree level qualification in the department he's head of, so you'd get a scientist as science minister and foreign secretary who spoke a foreign language and had actually spend more than two weeks at a stretch abroad. I appreciate being a good minister is about more than knowing the topic at hand, but at least it would mean we wouldn't have a climate change denier in charge of the department of the environment, and a minister of health who believes in sodding homeopathy.

It's almost a required subject now.

If you are playing the hierarchy of degree subjects, Boris' Classics degree is regarded as better than Cameron's PPE degree.

I too am appalled that the leader of this nation might 20 years ago have written a couple of essays about justice and representation. We should have leaders with useful and relevant skills, such as the mongering of fish.

we just have, so called, leaders that are mongering without any fish involved ...

'Classics' = 'Too thick to do a proper degree'.
'PPE' = 'Too thick to do Classics'.

Seriously, they're the degree equivalents of the old 'general studies' O-level they used to do. You know, the one nobody bothered putting on their CV if they had it.

True. But a politics degree might be more useful if you become a politician.

By sheer coincidence, I need to write an essay about Immanuel Kant's Transcendental Deduction by Wednesday. As it's such idiot stuff I imagine you can give some pointers? A couple of thousand words comparing the first and second editions of the Pure Reason, with an exposition of the role and nature of imagination in the synthesis of apprehension. for context I also need a side order of Hume and a bit of Ludy W's duck rabbit/seeing-as please. I believe that is all covered in a standard PPE course, so easy peasy for you.

I see your point. My CV just lists "11 GSCE's, grades C and above". I would never want to mention General Studies being one of them.

There was a general studies course? Not at my school.

If you're going into politics I would expect you to have studied something of the subject - all this reads like the snobbery I saw towards sociology degrees at college.

My issue is the old boys network running the country, and the increasing lack of representation of the other classes, who have doubtless dismissed any ideas of a career in politics because of the slimy image portrayed by the likes of the current cabinet.

Discourage the working class oiks from entering politics and the world is ours - job done.

Yup, I've got a 'general studies' O-level too. I managed to pass the exam despite one of the compulsory sections being to translate a passage of text from German, a language I do not speak or read a single word of.


Well, you can do a degree in politics if you like. That's fair enough, although I'd rather our ministers and MPs were qualified in doing the job of government, not getting the job of government. I'd leave that part up to the analysts and party strategists. And while I appreciate the snobbery towards social sciences ( I work in a department full of mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists and I have a psychology degree, so believe me...). However a PPE is not a politics degree. It's a easiest third of a politics degree, combined with the easiest third of a philosophy degree, combined with the easiest third of an economics degree. It's basically a degree for people who aren't up to getting an actual degree in any of those three subjects.


I wouldn't disagree with most of that, although I'd argue the previous lot weren't much better and the current other options aren't much better either. However I wouldn't object to say a Chancellor who went to Eton and Cambridge, if he got a first class economics degree while he was there. I am snobbish in a sense. I'm snobbish towards people who aren't highly qualified to do jobs I need them to do well.


Actually what they've done is make politics so expensive to take part in that the working class simply can't do so, whether they want to or not. if the only accepted way into politics is a PPE/law degree followed by a year's unpaid internship in a party office, nobody who actually has to work to put a roof over their head is going to be able to make the grade.