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.