I know many readers are sick of me banging on about Oxford, but I promise this column is about a bigger question: are political and educational elites in countries such as the UK, the US and France genuinely elite achievers?
In the past year, I’ve published two books about elites. The first, Barça, is an inside look at FC Barcelona, the football club, and the second, Chums, a dyspeptic account of the mostly male Oxford-educated Conservatives who rule Britain. A response I often get is, “Surely the best-educated people should be running the country?” But whereas the sporting elite is a high-performance meritocracy, the political elite isn’t.
To play for a top-class football team, such as Barcelona until about 2019, you had to be one of the 200 or so best footballers on earth. All players have trained for the job since childhood, amid continuous selection. After each season, eight to 10 boys in every team in Barça’s youth academy, the Masia, are replaced by newcomers selected from among the millions who want to be professional footballers. The average kid lasts only three years in the Masia.