If the Democrat Pete Buttigieg is to be the next president of the United States then preparation will be key — something he learnt after being thrown out of his first Oxford University tutorial.

The economics lecturer Linda Yueh ejected the young Rhodes scholar, now bidding to be the US’s first gay president, because he was underprepared.

Mr Buttigieg, 38, who has compared himself to Barack Obama, had a degree from Harvard but said that the “rigour” of Oxford had left him “terrified . . . this had never happened to me before”.

Mr Buttigieg in 2005, while studying at Pembroke College BAHRAIN MINISTRY OF INTERIOR; ALAMY

Lev Sviridov, a fellow Rhodes scholar, told The Times: “He had come from Harvard, one of the greatest universities in the world, and realised that the training he had was