I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup

I may be misreading some of your remarks — please forgive me if that's the case — but to respond to some of the points you make:

The list of UK Prime Ministers and opposition leaders, particularly in the earlier part of the twentieth century, does contain many wealthy 'establishment' figures, including some with aristocratic backgrounds, but the suggestion that almost all of them went to the same high school and have the same cultural background is a gross exaggeration.

Churchill was the son of a Lord and an American heiress, and was literally born in a palace. Thatcher was the daughter of a shopkeeper and a seamstress, and grew up in a home without a garden or a proper bathroom (the family's toilet was in a small outbuilding — not an uncommon situation for ordinary people at the time).

Attlee was the son of a wealthy lawyer, and he grew up in a house with a tennis court and several servants. Callaghan was the son of a coastguard sailor who died of a heart attack at a relatively young age, leaving his wife and children in poverty; as a teenager Callaghan was eligible to go to Oxford, but he couldn't afford to. He became Prime Minister regardless.

Cameron's father was a stockbroker and his mother was a magistrate. Major's father was a circus performer who made a living selling garden ornaments, and his mother was a dancer who worked in a local library; the family was nearly bankrupted in the 1950s and lived in a small flat in Brixton. Major never went to university, yet he still became Foreign Secretary (meaning he was in charge of the FCO — perhaps your friend's mistake was going to university at all, though I wouldn't worry about him; the future King and Queen are also both St. Andrew's graduates), and then Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister.

Eden's family were landed gentry. May's father was a village vicar; both of her parents died shortly after she graduated from university.

Wilson was the son of a chemist and a schoolteacher. Blair's father was given up for adoption as a baby and became part of the family of a shipyard worker and his wife; he grew up in a Glasgow tenement with an ambition to become a barrister, which he achieved. Blair's mother was the daughter of a butcher; she was born in the flat above the family shop.

One could go on; there is certainly privilege in the backgrounds of many British Prime Ministers, but there is also poverty and much else too.

There are popular private schools in the UK favoured by the wealthy, such as Eton, Harrow, Westminster etc., and many of the UK's political elites were educated at those schools, but it is not correct that almost all of them were. Many of the pupils at those schools do have wealthy parents, but not all of them are from the same background (I attended a British private school on a scholarship. Thatcher attended a local girls' grammar school on a scholarship). There are also expensive prep schools in the US favoured by the wealthy and privileged; the US and UK are not especially dissimilar in that regard. The main difference is that British schools tend to have longer histories, and admit a higher proportion of students on academic merit due to old bursaries and tax incentives.

I am struggling to understand your remarks about the number of people that must be won over to become an MP in parts of the UK, but what you are referring to sounds a lot like rotten boroughs, which were — contrary to what you state — abolished over a hundred years ago, by the 1832 Reform Act. If you are not referring to rotten boroughs, then what you are describing is just a marginal constituency where the vote is tightly contested between parties, and those exist in all democracies that use the first past the post system, including the US.

If anything, some would argue that the electoral situation is better in the UK because gerrymandering — which is acknowledged to be a widespread problem in the US — is for the most part impossible in Britain, since districting has largely been removed from political control and handed over to the independent Boundary Commissions. I take no stand on the wisdom or otherwise of the current approach to that issue in the UK, but similar solutions are widely advocated in the US in areas affected by gerrymandering. It is not uncommon for elections in the US to be decided on the basis of a small number of votes — the US and UK are, again, similar in that regard. So few people needed to be 'won over' to change the result of the 2000 presidential election in the US that the election was effectively decided by a court, and a closely divided court at that.

I agree with your observation that the electoral system in the UK can be 'hugely undemocratic', but that is a generic complaint about the first past the post system, which is also used to decide all major national elections in the US.

I can attest to the fact that Latin (if not full classics courses, which are typically the preserve of universities) is still commonly taught in British private schools, but I don't see much evidence that learning it will do a great deal for you career-wise anymore in the UK; Johnson is the first Prime Minister in sixty years to have a classics degree. Quod erat demonstrandum.

What I see in the quotes in the link is Johnson expressing a personal preference for the UK to retain access to the single market and influence in its governing structures, in remarks made in 2013, a few years before the referendum was held. He talks about his voting intentions — at that time, he was the Mayor of London and had no vote in Parliament, so he is referring to how he might vote in what was, at that time, a hypothetical future referendum. The wider context, which is apparent from the contemporary reporting [1], is that, at the time, he was calling for the Single Market to be reformed, and for the UK to leave most of the EU's structures, but to remain part of the reformed market. A couple of years later, Cameron attempted to secure some reforms to the UK's relationship with the EU, but he focused on immigration and welfare rather than the Single Market. Cameron then presented the reforms (such as they were) as part of the basis for his support of the UK's continued membership of the EU during the referendum campaign, but no changes to the Single Market of the kind that Johnson had called for earlier were agreed.

My recollection of the role of the Single Market in the referendum is that the official Leave campaign was pressed to take a position on retaining Single Market membership; that they ultimately came down in favour of leaving (in order to remove the UK from the jurisdiction of the ECJ and allow EU regulations to be repealed); and that Johnson (who was part of the official campaign) subsequently adopted that official campaign position in his public statements. During the referendum itself he therefore supported leaving the Single Market, at least in its unreformed 2016 incarnation.

My memory is that the key statement of the official Leave campaign's position on the Single Market was made by Michael Gove on the Andrew Marr show. I remember it because the Leave side had been under pressure to make its position clear at the time, and Gove's response on the show seemed to signify that they had chosen to bite the bullet and accept leaving the Single Market. On the one hand, adopting a clear position meant that they couldn't be accused of equivocating on the subject any longer, but on the other hand, the Remain campaign was then able to argue more strongly that the Leave side was embracing trade disruption. Here's the relevant quote from the transcript of the Marr show[2]:

'Marr: Let me ask you, just before we leave the economics actually, a very simple question I have tried to get an answer to from various people on your side – is should we or should we not be inside the single market? Do you want us to stay inside the single market? Yes or no.

Gove: No. We should be outside the single market. We should have access to the single market, but we should not be governed by the rules that the European Court of Justice imposes on us, which cost business and restrict freedom.'

The BBC reported at the time that Gove's answer on the Marr show was a response to the pressure to clarify the Leave campaign's position on the Single Market.[3]

Incidentally, with regard to Johnson claiming to be a fan of the EU; I don't personally find this surprising. He has a well-publicised affinity for European civilization; in a book about ancient Rome that he published some years ago, he wrote approvingly about the ability of the Empire to unite diverse peoples as citizens of a common European state, and contrasted that history with the EU — the book was adapted into a television series for the BBC that he presented. His father also used to work for the European Commission; before he was sent off to Eton, he, his siblings and his future wife were educated at a school in Brussels that was established for the children of EU staff [4]. It may be worth noting that the comment was also somewhat qualified; he said that 'in some ways' he was 'a bit of a fan'.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boil-it-down-...

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/08051604.pdf

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36084457

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_School,_Brussels_I

I did not claim that Blair was a 'man of the people', though there are plenty of people who might credibly be described in those terms who have been involved in ruling the UK. You stated above that 'if you are a Brit, you understand that almost all of the people you name went to the same high school and have the same background'. I am British, and I know your statement is an exaggeration, which is why I noted examples of the backgrounds of some of the people referred to. I agree with you that it is relevant to a discussion of this topic that Tony Blair attended a fee-paying school, but I also think it is relevant — if background is important as you suggest — that the decision to send him to a fee-paying school was made by a mother who was the daughter of a butcher, and a father who was adopted into a working class family as a baby and grew up in a tenement in Glasgow. You can draw whatever conclusions you want from that, but to me, a reasonable consideration of that example, and others like the ones I noted, illustrate that it is not correct that 'almost all' of the British ruling class have the same cultural background.

> Does Philips-Exeter and Groton have the same route into govt specifically (which is surprising given that money is more important in US politics, and the US has far wealthier people at the top end)? No.

I'm no expert on American prep schools, but a quick look at the alumni of the ones you mention reveals two presidents, three secretaries of state, four treasury secretaries, dozens of governors, the founder of the Republican Party, the first Director of the CIA, the first Director of National Intelligence, the founder of Facebook, and too many senators, members of congress, federal judges and ambassadors etc. to list. It is curious to me that you don't believe this indicates that attending these schools provides a route into government, whereas a similar list of the alumni of a British school like Eton does. In looking up Groton alumni I found an observation about the school from one of them, who was a friend of Franklin Roosevelt's (another Groton alumnus). He wrote 'Ninety-five percent of the boys came from what they considered the aristocracy of America [...] Among them was a goodly slice of the wealth of the nation.' It seems to me that Eton and Groton are not dissimilar in that regard.

> All you have to do is convince the local constituency party or some other small group of people in a safe seat (again, both Cameron and Blair have reformed this, although Labour's recent issues with selection should demonstrate that the system is still problematic).

This is a description of the process required to be selected as a candidate for a particular party. In order to become an MP the candidate must then win an election that returns them as the most popular candidate. It may be disappointing that voters in safe seats reliably opt for the candidates of a particular party, but that does not necessarily make their election 'hugely undemocratic'. If the people in these constituencies objected to the candidate of the party that traditionally wins there, they could democratically elect someone else instead.

> It is nothing to do with a small number of votes deciding elections, that is just irrelevant, the outcome of an election is the outcome, it being close has nothing to do with anything.

It would be relevant if that is what you had meant when you wrote that becoming an MP in the UK only requires winning over a small number of people. You have clarified that what you actually meant is that being selected as a candidate for a particular party in parliamentary elections might only involve winning over a small number of people in a local constituency party. Those candidates must then secure the votes of a much larger number of people in an election if they are to become MPs. You neglected to mention that latter fact, presumably because you felt that elections in safe seats are somehow undemocratic because the local population reliably elects candidates from a particular party.

> FPTP isn't undemocratic. I would look at what the word democratic means. It is unrepresentative, it is most certainly not undemocratic.

In the UK, the first past the past system nearly always produces a result in which a substantial majority of voters are not represented by the MP they voted for. British governments are therefore typically controlled by a party that has been rejected by a majority of voters. The governing party in the UK hasn't won a majority of the votes in a general election since the 1930s. I would argue that the UK is a democracy in some sense of the word in spite of this, but the first past the post system is not guaranteed to produce democratic results, and in Britain it usually doesn't.

> If you were a scholarship boy, don't try to waggishly quote Latin. People can see through you like a window, it impresses no-one.

I think we're in agreement here. If quoting Latin impresses no-one, it's unclear to me why you think it is important that some old-fashioned schools briefly force their pupils to study it. It can be studied at Oxford and Cambridge and many other universities, but classics has been a niche subject for a long time, and it doesn't confer any particular career advantage over more popular subjects like economics and history that are taught at all schools. I doubt it is any easier to obtain a degree in classics from a prestigious university due to a lack of competition from applicants who were not educated at private schools than it is to obtain a degree in any other niche subject that is more widely taught. It is true that there is less competition for places to study classics than many subjects due to a lack of interest, but that is also true of courses in language and religion — subjects which are very widely taught outside private schools. [1]

Classics was already an outdated choice of university subject by the time Johnson was studying it in the eighties, which perhaps explains why prior to the 2019 election no Prime Minister or opposition leader with a classics degree had contested a general election for six decades.

[1] https://www.admissionreport.com/university-of-oxford