Disastrous in every other respect, the recent revival of Etonian premierships did have a solitary benefit: a related succession of damning memoirs and studies of and by Etonians. When combined with the staggering failures of David Cameron and Boris Johnson, they conveyed one overwhelming message: the threat from this school is enough to justify some targeted form of vetting. It was ignored, of course, and the result is Kwasi Kwarteng.
If additional checks seem extreme, it has become clear that a general and well-founded suspicion of Eton, the academy also known as charity 1139086, offers the public little protection from its faultier products, partly because it considers them the flower of its system. The risk is exacerbated by another Etonian practice to which Tories, in particular, have proved fatally susceptible. Here’s Johnson fan Andrew Gimson on his other hero’s Boris-rivalling charm: “Kwarteng has a gusto and readiness to be amused which are not always found in senior politicians.” Many of us witnessed this readiness at the Queen’s funeral, where he seemed to be laughing his head off. And if you didn’t know, or didn’t care, that the cheerful Kwarteng also considered (see Britannia Unchained), many fellow citizens to be “among the worst idlers in the world”, all this laughter is possibly quite disarming. His fellow Etonian, the critic James Wood, has recalled the headmaster’s advice for leavers: “The Etonian, he said, is one who can go into any room, mingle with any social group, be at ease and put others at their ease.”
