Posh and Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain
BBC2, Wednesday 26 January 9:00pm - 10:00pm
"I don't think social background helps or hinders a political career," drawls old-Etonian MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, implausibly - a laugh-out-loud moment in Andrew Neil's well-judged and watchable film about the public-school stranglehold on Westminster. Bear in mind Rees-Mogg is one of 20 old Etonians in the Commons, eight of them ministers, but none of them, perish the thought, assisted by their elite education or connections, dear me no. As Neil - a grammar school boy himself - argues, to object to the increasingly privileged pipeline into politics isn't the stuff of working-class chippiness: the state-educated middle classes are on the outside, too. In effect, the film is an extended argument for the return of grammar schools, from which the likes of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Harold Wilson and Ted Heath emerged in what now looks like a golden age of social mobility. Neil, as ever, isn't what you'd call likeable, but he makes a strong case.
VIDEO Plus+: 4881
Subtitled, Widescreen, High definition, Audio-described
Directed by: Ben Steele Radiotimes
