Guardian - Carole Cadwalladr - Whatever the party, our political elite is an Oxbridge club

But the Oxbridge connection is more invidious than this and if it hasn't been considered worthy of comment during the leadership contest, it's in part because in Britain most people who do the commenting also went there. Oxbridge doesn't just dominate the Palace of Westminster but an entire political class. From the politicians and the special advisers to the political editors, pundits and thinktankees, there's a homogeneity of experience, of thinking, of networks, of power and of influence that has led to an in-crowd that doesn't even recognise it's an in-crowd. There's arguably more that unites our political elite than divides them. The last election was a battle between one Oxford PPE graduate (Cameron) and another Oxford PPE graduate (Miliband).

Of course, if you believe Oxford and Cambridge are simply our two finest universities, that they take the brightest and the best, and it's a matter of the natural order of things that their graduates should go on to govern us, none of this is a problem. But how can this be true? Just 7% of the population go to private schools and yet they take 44% of the places at Oxford, and 38% at Cambridge. What are we saying? That rich people are cleverer than the rest of us? That they're more able? That they deserve to rule?
[....]
(Though not many: between them, Eton and Westminster send almost twice as many students to Oxbridge as the whole of Wales.) But the problem with this is that it nurtures a dangerous myth: that we live in a meritocracy. It promotes the fallacy that Oxbridge is a means of channelling talent, rather than shoring up an iniquitous status quo. For those who get in, it's easy to believe we live in a country where hard work pays off.

But it simply doesn't. And Oxbridge is both a symbol and an enabler of that. Politicians and pundits have pat little phrases about "falling social mobility" and "increasing inequality", but this doesn't even touch what it feels like to be locked out. Almost an entire generation has been excluded from the life chances most occupants of the Palace of Westminster enjoy. Even within Labour, the Corbyn campaign noted this week, twice as many MPs went to a private school as come from a working-class background.

We've noted this before, but it mixes well with this

Scriptonite - Labour Rejected Me In The Purge, Then `Outed' Me In The Media As An `Infiltrator'

It is one thing disallowing registered supporters with a right-wing history, having gathered robust evidence that they are seeking to undermine the party. The case of conservative columnist Toby Young is one such example. But I would be against rejecting any new supporter, whatever their voting history (but especially social democrats) who seek to help build the party into a broad, popular, social democratic movement. By kicking out anyone who voted Green in 2015, they are basically barring the route back to Labour for disaffected social democrats.

Furthermore, if Labour don't win back these voters, they are sunk in 2020. Labour need to win an extra 106 seats in 2020 to gain a majority, an almost impossible task. But that almost impossible task becomes totally impossible without a mass, popular movement to reengage the public. Just 24% of people voted Conservative in the last election, 76% didn't. The largest gains went to socially democratic populists the SNP, who killed Labour in Scotland. The biggest losers were the Liberal Democrats, the only `centrist' party in town.

So why would the Parliamentary Labour Party NOT want to harness the power of a populist, social democratic movement? Especially when it is the only chance they have of regaining office in 2020.

It is becoming ever more clear that the Labour Party in Westminster has become a part of a permanent political class alongside their Tory and Liberal Democrat counterparts. Disengagement and voter apathy means a fairly stable job, a few seats lost and won either way each election and no big surprises. The chance to earn a great wage and pass policies which guarantee lucrative consultancy/director roles after politics. All done with the passive acceptance of a disaffected electorate, half of whom don't even bother to vote anymore. To this permanent political class, a popular movement based on social democratic values is about as welcome as a fart in an elevator.

Sure, he's a crony capitalist whose success depended on his connections and astute manipulation of the law (including the bankruptcy code). But how is that attack going to sound coming from Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush?

Is it really too risky to have a commander-in-chief who says he would not rip up the Iran deal and would not make stronger moves against Vladimir Putin in Ukraine unless our European allies ask us to -- and yet soberly sensible to elect the chief architect of the Libyan debacle or a candidate who thinks it's a good idea to trumpet Paul Wolfowitz as one of his key advisers?

Or are we going to say we can't elect him because he's a jerk and a blowhard and has said awful things about women? Really? More awful than the things Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee have said about gay people? More inflammatory than the things virtually every Republican candidate has said about Russia or Iran? (I'll take a leader who believes "Persians are great negotiators" over "Iran is run by a messianic suicide-cult" any day.) Or because he's a man with terrible taste? You don't think Trump would actually build a classier ballroom than Washington's got now? Have you been to Washington lately?

Many people thought the Labour party would struggle to top the disaster of losing the general election, but it has silenced the doubters by somehow contriving to lose its own internal leadership election. Voters have signed up to support it, and Labour has reacted with a purge of such generalised unfairness that I'm almost starting to doubt that its leading lights really wanted to bring democracy to Iraq. It must be easy weeding out applications from those who don't share Labour values - surely the very fact that they've made a decision and put their name to it is a huge beacon saying "Outsider!" A party that sees enthusiasm as a negative - at least that's a quality that may win back Scotland.

Perhaps Harriet Harman's handling of the whole debacle is a brilliant piece of marketing designed to make whoever takes over seem like a genius. There's an easy way to find genuine Labour supporters - they boasted about voting Green in this election and kept quiet about voting Lib Dem in the last. Naturally, what Labour fears is not Tory entryism, but the horror of infiltration by the sort of people Labour is supposed to represent. Most columnists seem to feel that the party should plump for one of three fairly unpalatable options as at least they can win an election, just not this election, as there are too many people voting.

...

Leaders around the world are nervous about Corbyn winning and becoming PM, as they know every time they visit the UK he'll present them with another bottle of his homegrown elderflower champagne. I'm enjoying senior Tory peers calling Corbyn a "throwback". A guy in a horsehair wig wearing a cape, who got a job for life because his great-great-great-grandfather had a knack for picking out the healthiest slaves? We can safely assume that Corbyn is no longer on the establishment's Christmas card list. But he has been added to their other list, right below the crossed out name of Dr David Kelly.

In principle the annual Burning Man festival sounds a bit like a socialist utopia: bring thousands of people to an empty desert to create an alternative society. Ban money and advertisements and make it a gift economy. Encourage members to bring the necessary ingredients of this new world with them, according to their ability.

Introduce "radical inclusion," "radical self-expression," and "decommodification" as tenets, and designate the alternative society as a free space, where sex and gender boundaries are fluid and meant to be transgressed.

These ideas -- the essence of Burning Man -- are certainly appealing.

Yet capitalists also unironically love Burning Man, and to anyone who has followed the recent history of Burning Man, the idea that it is at all anticapitalist seems absurd: last year, a venture capitalist billionaire threw a $16,500-per-head party at the festival, his camp a hyper-exclusive affair replete with wristbands and models flown in to keep the guests company.

Burning Man is earning a reputation as a "networking event" among Silicon Valley techies, and tech magazines now send reporters to cover it. CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Larry Page of Alphabet are foaming fans, along with conservative anti-tax icon Grover Norquist and many writers of the libertarian (and Koch-funded) Reason magazine. Tesla CEO Elon Musk even went so far as to claim that Burning Man "is Silicon Valley."

As usual, the private sector is certain that it can do the government's job more nimbly and efficiently. In a recent column, Rance Crain, editor in chief of Advertising Age--one of the foremost trade publications for America's most self-regarding content-creators--argued that to combat the forces of extremism, America's creatives must metaphorically enlist in the fight. The headline: "To Battle Isis' Message, We'll Need Slickly Produced Content That's Just as Compelling." Like any good evangelist, Crain set the stage for his big takeaway with a confession of crippling doubt and weakness. Yes, dear readers, our ad savant had previously questioned Madison Avenue's ability to make a dent in the war on radical Islam, but his readers set him straight:

After my first ISIS column ran, I got an email from Stephen Feldman, CEO of Feldman Integrated Marketing, challenging my notion that advertising wouldn't change minds in such a standoff: "An industry that spends over $500 billion per year to inform, educate, persuade and sell cannot change any minds?"

It's a fair point. The ad wizards who convinced a nation that Subway is health food have a proven ability to fight wars of competing ideas. But are they up to this particular task? Crain's modern-day Don Drapers go on to suggest that someone create an anti-ISIS video celebrating "non-violent" Muslim heroes, featuring "a powerful music track created by a global artist in collaboration with a young Muslim star." And then, perhaps, the Coca-Cola polar bears can shuffle endearingly into the scene to tell the kids to stay in school (unless, obviously, that school is a radical madrassa).

We usually don't take a car," the yeshiva boy says to the driver, an older Irish man with a hearty laugh and a dapper straw hat. "But the lady was inappropriately attired (he winks at his date), in her heels I mean, so we had to -- "

The yeshiva boy's date cuts him off and leans forward to the driver, deciding to turn her frustrations into a joke: "Sir, he doesn't really care about the heels. It's my actual choice of attire that he finds inappropriate. My skirts are too short, it makes him nervous, he won't even call me by my name, you know how religious boys are..."

The driver turns the corner. "That's the problem with religion, it's sexist," he says, looking at her in his mirror. "I know because my parents were religious Catholics. It's all a bunch of sexist garbage."

Five adult polar bears have ambushed a team of Arctic meteorologists working in an isolated area of Russia.

A meteorologist and an engineer are currently trapped in the Fyodorov weather station on Vaygach Island in northern Russia and have no means to deter the bears after an attempt to scare them off with flares failed.

One of the trapped scientists has said that the bears are sleeping near the station and have been seen to be aggressive, fighting with each other near the base.

The Commons Speaker, John Bercow, has authorised a trial of changes to the voting system in parliament in response to complaints that an influx of MPs with surnames starting with Mc are creating long queues in the lobbies.

In July the MP for Kettering, Philip Hollobone, said the arrival of 25 MPs with surnames beginning with Mc - many of whom were among the 50 new Scottish National party MPs joining the Commons after the general election - were contributing to delays in the time it took to vote.

Wot, so the scottish Labour MPs who lost their seats were no true Scotsmen?

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}