Sir John Major: Elite power control in Britain ’truly shocking’

London: The dominance of a private-school educated elite and the well-heeled middle classes in the “upper echelons” of public life in Britain is “truly shocking”, Sir John Major has said.

The former Conservative prime minister said he was appalled that “every single sphere of British influence” in society was dominated by men and women who went to private school or who were from the “affluent middle class”.

His comments will be keenly felt by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who was educated at Eton, and who has faced repeated criticism for surrounding himself with advisers and ministers from a similar background and for failing to address the issue of social mobility. More than half of the Cabinet, including Cameron, George Osborne, the Chancellor, and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, went to private schools and are independently very wealthy.

In the speech to Tory party grassroots activists, Sir John — who went to a comprehensive in south London and left school with three O-levels — said: “In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me, from my background, I find that truly shocking.”

Sir John blamed this “collapse in social mobility” on Labour, which he said “left a Victorian divide between stagnation and aspiration” despite Ed Miliband’s “absurd mantra to be the one-nation party”.

Similar concerns about social mobility were voiced last year by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, who went to state school, but Sir John’s remarks will have extra resonance because of his role as a party grandee.

Sir John said: “I remember enough of my past to be outraged on behalf of the people abandoned when social mobility is lost.” He continued: “Our education system should help children out of the circumstances in which they were born, not lock them into the circumstances in which they were born. “We need them to fly as high as their luck, their ability and their sheer hard graft can actually take them. And it isn’t going to happen magically.” Turning to the Conservatives’ prospects at the 2015 general election, Sir John said that if the party decided to “shrink into our comfort zone we will not win general elections — the core vote cannot deliver a general election majority”. He said: “We don’t need to make personal attacks on Ukip. Many of the Ukip supporters are patriotic Britons who fear their country is changing. It is far more productive to expose the follies in their policies.” Sir John, prime minister from 1990 to 1997, said internal criticism of the Government should be kept behind closed doors, even though it could be “productive”.

Sir John also urged the Tories to resist the Liberal Democrats’ “vindictive” plans for a “mansion tax” on expensive homes. He said: “We should help people protect what they have built up through their lifetime, whether it be their home, their pension or their savings and that is why the threat of a mansion tax is so vindictive.” Sir John, who last month called for a windfall tax on energy companies, also said Conservatives should not be afraid to intervene in the private sector when “people are maltreated” because their duty was to the electorate, not to companies.