There’s nothing the ruling Labour political class likes more than propagating the Oxbridge class myth that the Conservative party is a cosy PPE graduate club, its cabinet full of over-privileged Bullingdon members, whilst Labour is the party of merit, ‘social equality’ and equal opportunity.
Burnham arrived in No. 10 promising radical change. But a glance at his government appointments makes a joke of any idea that Labour is the real party of merit. The new PM likes to wear dark Don Johnson-like T-shirts and peddle the idea that he is different – that he comes from a working-class northern family and that reading English at Cambridge didn’t really change him. That he was not part of a privileged elite who attended May Balls, punted on the Cam and waltzed into their first job at the ‘BBC’ or investment banks. Young Andy, instead, took an unpaid job at the Middleton Guardian.
This idea of an Oxbridge club that favours those with the right ‘connections’ is a Labour class warrior myth
This narrative was presented when Burnham was interviewed by a podcast, filmed at Downing Street, called Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future, hosted by Jimmy McLoughlin, son of former Tory chairman and MP Sir Patrick McLoughlin. Talking of his time reading English at Cambridge (graduating with a 2:1 degree in 1991), Burnham said: ‘The people I’d been at university with, who had very connected parents, were just walking straight into internships at the Times, placements at the BBC, into Goldman Sachs and all sorts of things.’
But I don’t buy this. As somebody who read English at Cambridge at almost exactly the same time as Burnham (graduating in 1990 with the same degree), I can attest that nobody just swanned into a job at the BBC, the Times – where I ended up – or an American investment bank because their parents had ‘connections’.
This idea of an Oxbridge club that favours those with the right ‘connections’ is a Labour class warrior myth. The competition in 1990 to win one of the three places on the graduate trainee scheme at the Times was fierce, with hundreds – if not thousands – of ambitious young graduates applying from all around the UK.
Unlike 90 per cent of my contemporaries who only wanted to work in banking, I was paid £14,000 a year to work in Wapping as a trainee at the Times, alongside Nick Watt – now Newsnight’s political editor – and Alice Thompson, now an opinion columnist at the paper. Of the three of us, I was the only Oxbridge graduate, so Burnham’s class theory seems poorly researched.
Previous jobs had been awarded to Boris Johnson and Toby Young (now Lord Young of Acton). The latter won his Wapping desk not because Toby’s Labour peer father had pulled a few strings with Rupert Murdoch but because after attending a ‘community college’ in Totnes, he took a First from Oxford, was a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard and dropped out of a philosophy PhD at Cambridge to turn to journalism. On landing his Times traineeship, Johnson was packed off to Wolverhampton where he learned the glamour of news reporting working for the Express and Star.
In my case, the then-Times editor Simon Jenkins seemed to enjoy that I had bunked off lectures in the winter of 1989, driven to Berlin in a clapped-out Peugeot to report as the Berlin Wall came down for the university newspaper, and then covered – before I had sat my finals – the Velvet Revolution in Prague. I was also the first English journalist (albeit a young student) to report from inside Colditz Castle (for The Spectator). It was not down to spurious family ‘connections’ but rather seeing an opportunity and going for it.
Whilst Matthew Parris in the Times has defended Burnham’s Cambridge class-conscious imposter feelings I’d argue that Labour’s tribal family networks are more exclusive and rife than today’s Conservative, Lib Dem, and Reform ranks (Nigel Farage went straight into the City during the Big Bang era and Richard Tice attended the University of Salford).
One of these Labour ‘networks’, for example, is made up of Burnham supporters based in Lancashire and Yorkshire such as Angela Rayner and Louise Haigh. The latter, who has a fraud conviction, is now one of the most senior cabinet members, with Rayner back as well.
Camilla Tominey nailed it in a recent Telegraph article: ‘Far from changing the guard, Burnham’s opening move has been to reassemble the same tired, insular ecosystem that has dominated the Labour apparatus for generations.’
More nepo-favouritism that will be infuriating Labour backbenchers include the promotion of the ‘Bridesmaid Gang’. This moniker comes from when Ellie Reeves was snapped on the terrace of the Commons beside her bridesmaids Rachel Reeves and culture ministers Stephanie Peacock and Vicky Foxcroft. Ellie Reeves is now Attorney General.
Burnham’s front bench is packed with the children of Labour grandees, from Stephen Kinnock, now Secretary of State for Wales, to Hamish Falconer, son of Lord (‘Charlie’) Falconer, who, after just two years as an MP for Lincoln, has been fast-tracked to a top Foreign Office job. Don’t forget Burnham’s promotion of Georgia Gould, the high-flying daughter of the late Baron Gould of Brookwood, as minister of state in the Department for Education.
Philip Gould, who died aged 61, was a founding member of New Labour who worked for 25 years to modernise the party. As shadow health secretary, Burnham knew him well. Growing up, Georgia enjoyed holidays with Alastair Campbell, Tessa Jowell and Tony Blair before reading history and politics at Oxford and a post-grad degree at the LSE. In other words, she is New Labour royalty, even appearing on the cover of Private Eye as a baby before the 1987 general election.
Burnham needs to be wary of parliamentary party and trade union resentment against this perceived political nepotism within the party. Playing the Oxbridge class myth card to try and hide the uncomfortable fact that cronyism is endemic in Labour’s ranks is not going to wash with disgruntled backbenchers who feel aggrieved. When Labour MP Rosie Duffield resigned the Labour whip in 2024, she accused Keir Starmer and his political clique of ‘sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice’.
As to whether Burnham will turn Labour’s crony-culture around to make promotion based on merit and equal opportunity, don’t hold your breath.
The truth is that most of his closest advisors, like himself, are also privileged Oxbridge types, ranging from his chief of staff, James Purnell (with a first in PPE) to Jonathan Powell. Labour’s ruling class likes to hang onto the idea that the Tory party represents the worst form of privileged elitism when the truth is that Labour’s deep family networks and ‘connections’ have ensured nepo-favouritism in Labour’s upper ranks for decades.
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