What do people mean when they refer to the British Establishment?
The phrase describes the formal and informal way in which power and influence is exercised in the United Kingdom.
You could divide it up into three general areas - the old establishment (long-established institutions); the new establishment (influential charities, think tanks, charismatic individuals); the anti-establishment (which ironically is continually being subsumed into the old establishment).
There is a crisis in the British establishment.
The abolition of the grammar schools in the early 1970s meant that few ordinary people were educated to the correct level and in the right format to be recruited into establishment institutions. This effectively closed-off access to establishment posts for everyone except Privately-educated Oxbridge alumni (in the rare instances where individuals from "bog-standard comps" get to Oxbridge and into the establishment you usually find that one or more of their parents were teachers or academics, effectively meaning they were tutored at home - the Miliband brothers for instance). After thirty years of this restricted recruitment the resulting gap between the elite and the ordinary people has become so blatant that it is, the words of Michael Gove Conservative Secretary of State for Education "morally indefensible".
Someone needs to write a book on the subject (but not me).
The phrase describes the formal and informal way in which power and influence is exercised in the United Kingdom.
You could divide it up into three general areas - the old establishment (long-established institutions); the new establishment (influential charities, think tanks, charismatic individuals); the anti-establishment (which ironically is continually being subsumed into the old establishment).
There is a crisis in the British establishment.
The abolition of the grammar schools in the early 1970s meant that few ordinary people were educated to the correct level and in the right format to be recruited into establishment institutions. This effectively closed-off access to establishment posts for everyone except Privately-educated Oxbridge alumni (in the rare instances where individuals from "bog-standard comps" get to Oxbridge and into the establishment you usually find that one or more of their parents were teachers or academics, effectively meaning they were tutored at home - the Miliband brothers for instance). After thirty years of this restricted recruitment the resulting gap between the elite and the ordinary people has become so blatant that it is, the words of Michael Gove Conservative Secretary of State for Education "morally indefensible".
Someone needs to write a book on the subject (but not me).
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