A measure of the anti-elite backlash will be when when a non-dark blue educated leader becomes a GE winner

It is not hard to spot the trend here

General Election Winning party leader Alma mater 1945 Clement Attlee University of Oxford 1950 Clement Attlee University of Oxford 1951 Winston Churchill Non graduate 1955 Anthony Eden University of Oxford 1959 Harold Macmillan University of Oxford 1964 Harold Wilson University of Oxford 1966 Harold Wilson University of Oxford 1970 Edward Heath University of Oxford 1974 Feb Harold Wilson University of Oxford 1974 Oct Harold Wilson University of Oxford 1979 Margaret Thatcher University of Oxford 1983 Margaret Thatcher University of Oxford 1987 Margaret Thatcher University of Oxford 1992 John Major Non graduate 1997 Tony Blair University of Oxford 2001 Tony Blair University of Oxford 2005 Tony Blair University of Oxford 2010 David Cameron University of Oxford 2015 David Cameron University of Oxford

Can the Oxford stranglehold continue?

It is 81 years since a party led by a grad of a university other than Oxford led his/her party to a general election victory. This table shows what happened in the intervening period

You have to go back to the 1935 to find an election winner, Stanley Baldwin, who was a graduate of a university other than Oxford. The only non-dark blues GE winners, Churchill (1951) and Major (1992)did not go to university.

Jim Callaghan and Gordon Brown are not in the list because they didn’t lead their parties to general election victories.

Mike Smithson

Follow @MSmithsonPB



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