My Conservative Home article
It is a strange myth that the three years people spend as undergraduates dictates their views, determines their skills and fixes their lives.
In the fast changing world we live in, every day is a day to learn something new, to battle your own ignorance and to embrace improved opinions and skills. I learned a lot more when I took private capital and free enterprise solutions to the governments of the world as a Director of Rothschilds, when I applied my investment experience to qualifying as a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investments , and when I led a couple of international industrial businesses than I did as a student.
It is true if someone reads law or medicine the undergraduate experience is part of their wider and longer professional education, but they opt for a life of continuous study and experience in their chosen fields. For the rest of us a first degree may be a remote memory, with little influence over what we think and do now. Most of us needed to train and learn very different lessons once we got into the world of work. The best things a university can impart to alumni is the need to be able to teach yourself, the skill to know where to go to be better informed about today’s challenges, and the self-criticism needed to acquire higher standards and better understanding.
It is true my three years of undergraduate history at Oxford did have four lasting effects on my views. I oriented my course through the limited choices we could make to pursue special interests in economic history and in the history of science and technology, appreciating their fundamental impact on living standards. The brilliance of the technology in the UK ‘s Industrial revolution and social and economic pioneering of entrepreneurs like Wedgwood and Cadbury were models of greater success.
That helped in my business career and as an MP.
We all had to take a paper on Political thought. I cannot remember much of Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke or Rousseau though I had to master their principles and main works at the time. They had no influence over my personal political philosophy. The sixth appointed thinker was Marx. He did have a profound impact on me as I sought to expose the lack of history, common-sense and compassion in his evil and divisive creed.
I saw the haunting damage his ideas were doing to the lives of people in the Soviet Union and Mao’s China. I started developing the freedom and free enterprise alternative, publishing my Popular Capitalism Manifesto in the 1980 s and taking it into Eastern Europe as the Berlin Wall came down. I explained how the period 1950 to the 1980s was a giant experiment between communism and a more free enterprise system based on personal liberty in the democracies. The freer societies became much richer, offering more comfortable lives. Anyone could travel from the US or UK to ask to live in the Soviet Union. People wanting to flee the poverty and tyranny of communism were shot trying to cross the border. Freedom won the Cold War.
We had to study general continental European history. I would have preferred to have studied American history. It was more relevant as background to understanding the superpower of the twentieth century, being a country of more importance to the technological success and defence of our own. The Oxford course designers included many European style socialists who thought the US too new and too brash to warrant general study. They wanted the UK inside the European Community and saw English history as a branch of European , probably disliking the later centuries when Great Britain became a global seafaring power. They wanted history in foreign languages to add to its cultural complexity.
This did also have a considerable influence over me.
The more I read of the attempts of the Romans, Vikings, French, Spanish, Dutch, Germans to create a European empire by force of arms with their invasion plans against England the more I wished to disentangle my country from damaging European politics.
The more I read of slavery and serfdom introduced by our Roman and Norman overlords, of the slavery in the German occupied Channels islands from 1940, of the sale of Englishmen into slavery by the Vikings the less I liked the continent’s past values. The bitter fight against new and liberating ideas by Galileo, Newton, Darwin and the others and the endless wars of religion were also a turn off. The course made me a conviction Eurosceptic. I voted to leave the EEC in 1975 in one of my first adult votes . Most attempts at creating a united Europe by arms or by diplomacy had caused endless trouble.
We also had to offer papers in what they called English history. It was of course GB history from 1603 and UK history from 1800. I loved the triumphs of our progress. I marvelled at our early limitation of royal power and establishment of legal rights. I admired the painful evolution of a universal franchise. I was humbled by the sacrifices so many made to see off Spanish, French and German attempts at European domination. I was relieved when Britain and our navy led the campaign to abolish slavery elsewhere.
What I learned of our past constitutional struggles was of great value as I and others led the Parliamentary fight to return our sovereign powers to people and Parliament after their usurpation by the EU. The English civil war they told me about became the war of the three kingdoms in later accounts. It prefigured the Brexit debates. Remain used Northern Ireland to hinder Brexit. Scotland voted a different way to England. I remarked that the Brexit rows were the civil war rows without the muskets.
It was a privilege to attend the university. Its great wealth of libraries and research materials were humbling and its intellectual. standards high. I did develop the history of science and technology I studied through two books I published. I took into politics the need to help defeat the evils of communist tyranny by the power of the pen. I held a determination that the hard won liberties of the British people should not be idly tossed away to a world of international treaties, overmighty quangos and the EU.
In today’s fast changing world graduates need to understand much of their real world education starts the day they graduate.
September 10, 2026
You’ve had a wide and varied career, unlike the dross that rules us now.
It’s plain the only study they did was Marx.
I couldn’t believe yesterday when Burnham said Defence wouldn’t be funded before welfare.
With Bonds hovering around 6% I think we have a day of reckoning coming soon.
September 10, 2026
‘ In today’s fast changing world graduates need to understand much of their real world education starts the day they graduate.’
People are learning constantly. Extra years add experience and hopefully wisdom. ‘The school of hard knocks’ was what it used to be called. Despite the best endeavours of Mr. Blair, even today, not everybody is a graduate.
September 10, 2026
Well, this is an interesting article which explains much about the origin of our kind host’s political views
I graduated from university in the late 1970’s, during Margaret Thatcher’s reign. With 3 million unemployed and 27% inflation there were, as this summer, few job opportunities for graduates. I had to return to my parent’s house, where board and lodging were requested as both of them were unemployed
The local Labour Exchange (these days called a “Jobcentre”) found me a job as an assistant gardener, working for the council. This was manual labour outside in all weathers, mowing grass verges, weeding flower beds, edging plots and maintaining Victorian graves (“in perpetuity”) in a local cemetery.
By dint of good timekeeping, hard work and, having a cheerful disposition, I was promoted to Assistant Gravedigger. It was two years and dozens of applications before I eventually found a junior position in my university field.
September 10, 2026
So you suffered from the socialist disaster that Mrs Thatcher had to take on and recover from.
I’m please to know that your experience speaks to how truly dreadful the consequences of Socialism are, and what determination and focus it requires to recover.
You will know why we are all transfixed as the PM views the 70s as the Socialist golden era, and seeks to best it.
September 10, 2026
Yes Lynn, many people forget the total horlicks the Liebour government had made before 1979. As a tradesman I left the uk in 77 because I’d had enough of the unions, 3 day week etc and I returned over 20 years later. This time we were treated to the traitorous Bliar and his march through the institutions. Since then successive ugovernments have failed to row back in the socialist state which leads us to where we are today. Bankrupt and friendless. I’m glad I never went to University.
September 10, 2026
Well Thatcher partly took it on but did little about many of the rigged markets in transport, education, health care then made the appalling error of appointing John Major who failed nearly all his O levels as Chancellor and then let him join the ERM burying the party for three terms. We have suffered full socialism ever since for 40 years.
September 10, 2026
Allister Heath today:-
Shame on Ed Miliband, appeaser of Islamists
The Foreign Secretary is ignorant, deluded and in denial, guilty of erasing the memory of the victims of the October 7 pogrom
September 10, 2026
Allister Heath – client journalism.
Most of the good investigative journalists have long since disappeared from the pages of national newspapers.
Normally the Telegraph would leave this sort of stuff to Zoe Strimpel.
However, these days even poor old Sir Charles Moore is obliged to come up with the occasional pro Israel comment piece.
When China was running expensive advertorial supplements in the broadsheets there were less critical articles about them in the same papers.
September 10, 2026
Science and technology are the things that have changed most (that and the vast growth of the state and taxes)
Just before I went to secondary school they still used slide rules. I got a very simple calculator at about 14. The first train 1925, first flight 1903, first radio 1990s, telephone 1870s, chemical fertiliser 1840s
Technology is flying away exponentially as each new development gives us a new tool to advance things further. AI will race away. The state will however tax it all to death and get in the way where ever they can – as usual.
Reply Radios came in well before 1990 s and trains were Victorian
September 10, 2026
Sorry first trains 1825 and radios 1890 !
Development since the first steam engine circa 1712 has been amazingly fast.
First transisitor 1974, Now a modern iPhone contains between 16 billion and 19 billion transistors inside its main processor.
Early commercial transistors cost about $18 each in the early 1950s (roughly $145 to $150 today in real terms) now about $1/20,000,000,000 each. if only the state sector had increased efficiently that much!
September 10, 2026
Mrs T could not fight on all front simultaneously. She had to pick her battles, win and then move to the next.
She cleared up plenty.
Of course the most important thing she failed to do was secure the succession.
I believe that caused her massive grief in retirement, might even have exacerbated the breakdown of her health.
Nevertheless, she was a giant and every action and objective was a positive one.
September 10, 2026
I agree, her big mistake was John Major!
September 10, 2026
In receipt of public sector pensions then. Must be nice.
September 10, 2026
SG – strangely, I also worked for two weeks as a Trainee Gravedigger. I got fired after getting caught racing lawnmovers down the centre aisle with a friend. I lasted longer at the garage forecourt before joining the Army as a boy soldier. Since I’d left home at 16, I had to ask my Grandfather to sign the papers.
The Army gave me excellent technical skills but I also took a three year correspondence course with the Post Office and gained further civilian qualifications. On leaving service in the mid 70’s I was accepted onto a ‘Graduate Entry’ course by a large IT company. I was the only non-graduate on the course, the other lads mostly being fresh out of University. I can still remember how nervous I was on that first day meeting my fellow students. I also remember one of them complaining that the company car provided wasn’t that great. I was just delighted to be getting a car!
However, it turned out I needn’t have worried. For most, this was their first job whilst I had been working for over 10 years by then. My fellow engineers had little practical experience and often struggled with simple technical problems. I was 27 and they were 22/23 but there was a world of difference in experience, attitudes and abilities. I had served in Germany, North America and the Far East and worked in many different roles.
Three years later I was a Regional Support engineer and most of those guys had left the company. That company only ran one more Graduate Entry course as far as I know. Simply put, I was used to working long hours and getting things done. They had the theory but I had the practice. They went to University but I learned in the real world. A degree is a nice thing to have but it’s useless if you can’t get (and keep) a job. This is what I told my sons 20+ years ago. Both have had good careers with well paid jobs – without needing a degree.
September 10, 2026
Well Mrs Thatcher only became PM in May 1979 so she had not had much time to sort out the mess left by Wilson/ Callaghan and 98% income tax Denis Healey.
September 11, 2026
She became leader of the Opposition in February 1975. Most of the papers of the Shadow Cabinet before the election in 1979 are available from ‘The Thatcher papers’ in the Churchill Archives Centre (archives.chu.cam.ac.uk).
To say that ‘she had not had much time to sort out the mess …’ is rather ignorant of the history of the period.
Although that’s ‘history’ there is much to learn reading the main papers even for a ‘scientist’ like LL. And the access to them is free from the site.
September 11, 2026
How do you sort out problems before you gain power and become PM ?
Your argument based on 4 years before, when Lady Thatcher became leader of the opposition is beyond ridiculous hefner.
I note Labour is still blaming the previous government for their own failures.
September 11, 2026
Preparing for Government and governing are not the same thing.
Getting legislation through the House takes time.
She did not have enough TIME IN GOVERNMENT to deal with all the disasters Labour had wrought.
September 10, 2026
Re graduates today..Yes and they must also take into account that views from the past authors who actually made it into the canons were often biased and led by the church.Of course students are taught to use the selection of works as sources to argue between and that is a fairly closed shop as many publications would simply not have been allowed.
Politics today though are being led by the anti British,the latest punishment is a threatened stop to pensions calling them benefits.This is reverse thinking.Millions of people have paid NI all their lives to governments who have received the public’s ‘Benefits ‘ .The government has used and abused the benefits we have given them and now want to steal the money again.
September 10, 2026
Jane Austen, our greatest novelist, and a devout Christian (although not in a loud way) represented British values the best. Just perfect.
I’d die fighting for the values she represents (those values of The King of Kings). But I wouldn’t die for no greedy capitalist or Marxist or someone trying to ruin British culture with foreign cultures alien to us (not that I’m anti foreign culture – I’m not – but not to impose it on British culture).
September 11, 2026
Capitalists are not greedy, they give far more than they take.
Corporatists don’t give anything and take as much as they can.
You find Corporatists, who are employed, in Government and the institutions it spawns, and ‘big business’.
Capitalists are owners and employ.
Even you should be able to follow that explanation.
September 11, 2026
‘Capitalists are not greedy, they give far more than they take’
There are psychopaths and narcissists in capitalism as there are in the world of socialism / WOKE. (And it is psychopaths / narcissists who are responsible for at least 90% of the corruption / the trouble in our world overall).
I’m a capitalist. I also know tonnes of people who are capitalists too who are really decent people (I’m not saying I am decent – but that I know lots of capitalists who are).
So I think you’re having a bit of an argument with yourself.
September 11, 2026
Actually the ‘State Pension’ and ‘Pension Benefit’ are different things.
People who have not paid into our system get the same amount as the State Pension when they retire, and it’s called Pension Benefit. I think it should be abolished and those people should return to their homeland.
The State Pension is NOT a benefit, and it should continue to be uplifted by the triple lock.
We need to cut the Benefits Bill ad we can start by cutting all benefits to people who are not British or do not live in the U.K.
September 10, 2026
I don’t think you have led an “average” career or life path!
Most undergrads who like you are not well-connected, but don’t have your natural advantages (intellect, drive, etc) settled down into unexptional careers amongst similar-thinking individuals. They keep largely to their class and preserve their prejudices.
In today’s world the job for life – outside of the public service – is gone, so nowadays they need to learn new tricks along thecway, it’s true. But by and large – as you describe about yourself – their attitudes have been baked in by the time they graduate. This is not a good thing, when “faculty” is infested by marxists.
September 10, 2026
Just to let you know, JR did not have ‘connections’, but our education system was good enough to recognise a genius when they saw one, and of course we taxpayers are happy to fund education including University education for the gifted so that they are primed to contribute way above the average man.
September 10, 2026
Today many of the philosophers are also physicists and combine up to date science discoveries with social impact.For example they look at particle entanglement and apply it to the future.Quantum theories also take into account repetition in rituals causing neuroplasticity and shaping future events.
Galileo still features and his macroscopic, observable universe,but time itself is being challenged.We need to get it right.
September 10, 2026
I too learned much more once I was at the sharp end and paddling my own little canoe through the realities of life.
But I agree that we need to know history in order to avoid it’s repetition.
The last time aliens came in an ever increasing number of small boats and landed illegally in our island, those Britons on the beach included Arthur ap Uther and Lancelot ap Ban.
Those in the boats were the Saxons.
September 10, 2026
Life long learning is important as is rigour and standards enforced while being taught. This sets the baseline for a questioning attitude in later life which determines the difference between accepting information and doctrine or developing opinion.
September 10, 2026
One of the merits of the Butler Education Act was its acceptance of the different needs satisfied by universities, which were there to teach you how to think, and widen your knowledge, and technical colleges, which had the purpose of teaching skills. Something my housemaster at school used to bang on about ad nauseum, was the difference between Education and instruction; it bored me at the time, but looking back, l think he had a huge point.
Something in politics that hit me quite early on, was the lack of any questioning of the Labour postwar agenda of nationalisation. It seemed to have general acceptance, and l remember asking my father, who l knew had just caste a Conservative vote, why he did so if he agreed with Nationalisation, which he had told me he did.
The doubts l had always had, came into full focus when l was involved in moving a stockbroking General Office from the City to Chingford, to save money, and discovered the extreme difficulty of getting the nationalised telephone service to do anything at all. Sir Keith Jiseph and Margaret Thatcher came as a huge blast of fresh air, and l find it very hard ondeedcwhy anyone should want to u.do what they achieved by taking us back to the 70s.
September 10, 2026
Why indeed undo what Thatcher and Keith Joseph did, the problem was they did not go anywhere far enough in reducing the size of the state. And then Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak, Starmer and now Burnham all followed broken compasses all 180 degrees out on almost every topic.
Sir Keith Joseph famously stated in 1975: “It was only in April 1974 that I was converted to Conservatism. (I had thought I was a Conservative but I now see that I was not really one at all.)”
So Sir Keith was 54 when he finally got real! I think I was only about 13 roughly the same year! He read Law.
.
September 11, 2026
Yes that’s when Alfred Sherman showed Joseph what a Conservative is.
September 10, 2026
It is not so much what they study at university but what people choose to study indicates what sort of the different intelligences and enthusiasms they have. If you look at the very different choices the two genders make at A level this is is rather clear cut:-
Subjects with the Highest Share of Female Entries
English Literature: 79.2% female vs. 20.8% maleSociology: 77.0% female vs. 23.0% maleEnglish Language and Literature: 76.4% female vs. 23.6% malePsychology: 75.4% female vs. 24.6% maleArt and Design: 75.3% female vs. 24.7% male
Subjects with the Highest Share of Male EntriesComputing: 81.0% male vs. 19.0% femalePhysics: 76.5% male vs. 23.5% femaleFurther Mathematics: 73.6% male vs. 26.4% femaleEconomics: 69.6% male vs. 30.4% femaleDesign and Technology: 67.0% male vs. 33.0% female
September 10, 2026
Mr. L we’ve been expecting you….
September 10, 2026
Yes I agree. My husband’s thesis was comparing Germany economically after WWI and WWII..
He said it that work taught him what to concentrate on for the rest of his life.
September 10, 2026
If you Google this topic so many articles seem to think the closer the gender choices are to 50/50 it is the better. They talk of an improvement when more women do physics etc. Why? What a daft way to think. Let people do what they want to and what they are good at and they like.
September 11, 2026
It’s ‘sex’ not ‘gender’.
Let’s drop the woke.
September 10, 2026
Is the indoctrination of young minds into various mad religions not perhaps an evil form of child abuse?
The Two Miliband brother were fathered by Ralph Miliband a Polish Jewish immigrant. He was a Marxist intellectual and native of Brussels who fled Belgium during the Second World War. He graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford and later from the London School of Economics. Miliband became first a television journalist, then a Labour Party researcher and a visiting scholar at Harvard University, before rising to become one of Chancellor Gordon Brown’s confidants and chairman of HM Treasury’s Council of Economic Advisers.
What a disaster the Gordon Brown Era was and the two Miliband’s especially Ed are a disaster too. Did they have their immature minds indoctrinated? Was this child abuse – nature or nurture?
Buried very near Karl Marx in Highgate cemetery it seems. But was the Father indoctrinated too as a child?
September 10, 2026
Indoctrinated perhaps by his family circumstances at the time?
September 10, 2026
But the bourgeoisie can become greedy, selfish, self-indulgent and corrupt (Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is a great example of this).
I’m pro monarchy and the nobility and capitalism and all that but if the monarchy and the nobility and capitalists had been a bit more understanding and sensible they could have avoided the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution.
If they had taken a more moderate line, for example, such as Dr Zhivago. A capitalist. But also a realist. And a poet. Who could see the dangers of the capitalist world as well (Dickens tells us more-a-less the same moral tale in A Christmas Carol – but here he tells us how excessive capitalism can destroy lives – souls, hearts and imaginations as well as the love between a potential husband and wife).
September 10, 2026
Much truth in that, King Charles and P. William should certainly ditch their grade one hypocritical Net Zero climate alarmist drivel.
September 10, 2026
Hi. I try and avoid saying anything controversial as he’s still our king.
Personally, I’m a big fan of Queen Elizabeth I. Not perfect (but who is). But still pretty good.
September 10, 2026
training books, training courses, and so on, should all be tax deductible expenses on your tax return for normal PAYE workers like they are in many other countries
September 10, 2026
Oh, I can agree with that although I never had the intelligence to go to Uni – I left school at 14 3/4 with no qualifications and little understanding of the real world.
I slowly became a little more ‘educated’ through being in the work place and adding to my abilities at night school. We learn so much from one on one support and just living, initially believing all that our politicians had to say, eventually able to determine which ones were truly there to make our lives better, or theirs.
I’m amazed at the success I’ve had in the workplace. It was a long journey from ignorance and a poor education to having useful experience. It was a time of boom, mostly, for the UK, otherwise the opportunities would not have been available.
The labour government should understand this – Those millions of young people now deprived of a work experience education will be lost to us in a country that is deliberately failing to make the economy work and boom opportunities.
In my journey I have come to see that socialism is an evil that needs to be removed, like the EU it has no realistic survival potential. Get rid of socialism and we will surely BOOM like never before.
September 10, 2026
The three years people spend as undergraduates nowadays often have a negative effect on their views, and for many fixes their lives in debt.
September 10, 2026
Apologies for banging on!
All the best. Thank you
September 10, 2026
Hahaha, government is to set up a ‘class unit’. Smacks of the TV sketch involving John Cleese and the two Ronnies. At present the Labour government is firmly at the bottom of the class. Rather than embrace the modern world this is not so much going back to the 1970s but way back in history.
September 10, 2026
Everyone in the country should get 5000 Stg Pounds if Farage and Reform win at the next election
September 11, 2026
Why? Our economy has not been turned around.
September 11, 2026
I hardly think the USA has had a turnaround either.
Their GDP growth is only (relatively-speaking): 2.3 (To put into context: Poland – 3.3, Cyprus – 3.0, Croatia – 2.6, Ireland – 2.5, Sweden – 2)
September 10, 2026
The UK Parliament and their personal choices are doing well… ’10-year gilts hit 5.295% earlier today, the highest since August 2007. Just before the financial crash… The UK Parliament has even brought back the man responsible at the Treasury at the time.
Its only going to get worse, we have no choice
September 10, 2026
I fail to see the point of today’s topic.Burnham says Social Security is more important than National Security.
BEEB omitted to mention the sotto voce.Without NATIONAL there cannot be SOCIAL.Russia and China writ
large.Also Burnham indicates that he is minded to allow a referendum on Scottish independence.Thereby
opening the same right to Wales and NIreland.Scotland probably will,NIreland too close to call.Wales
know on which side their bread is buttered
September 11, 2026
Scotland has had a referendum. They voted to remain and at every election the confirm the Act of Union by voting to send representatives to Westminster.
N Ireland she’d blood to remain in the U.K., but they have been subject to ‘replacement’ to change the demographics and therefore the vote, however the South LOATHES Sinn Fein, so they have more in common than before.
Wales is a Principality.
September 10, 2026
Growing up poor like millions after WW2, as a teenager I became fascinated by Economics as it logically might explain why we were all so threadbare and maybe the magic key of how to solve this massive problem, especially as not many people related to this elusive subject, never mind Geography and History.
It was poorly taught and boring until I read “Modern Economics” by Pen, J. – Penguin – 1965 discussing the Dutch economic recovery post war.
Economics was a new O level and A level subject. I never looked back as it was so fundamental to everything today.
Later I was told that most successful businessmen have recognised this and it explains why those who don’t end up struggling without it.
You can often trace a person’s track record and persuasion by knowledge of Economics or lack thereof.
September 10, 2026
That book by J Pen was one of my favourites when I did economic A level.
I still love the subject and politics in general.
Thanks for reminding me Bill.
I agree with all you said.
September 11, 2026
Lord Redwood’s experience is very unusual – it is that of an unusually talented student at a top University (even Cambridge University which I attended seems to have expected a lot less from its students or perhaps it just aimed to get its top students, not me, to know a lot about a little rather than a little about a lot) and he later got top jobs.
Most people seem to learn little at University (and that mainly for exams, to be forgotten thereafter) and even less after University. It is amazing and very annoying to me (as a business owner who is expected to know many diverse things)how little most people, including virtually all public sector employees, know or understand about the job they are paid to do.
As Adam Smith wrote long ago, some jobs make people stupid.
Real or penetrative thought is a talent that very few people seem to possess and it does not seem to have much correlation with studying or not studying at a University. How rare such thought is was demonstrated within the last few days by Donald Trump promising all adults (not just taxpayers or Waspi women)which is very innovative five thousand dollars if he wins . I will comment in the next few days about it but I suspect it is a stroke of genius that will do just enough to enable him to win, certainly the Senate and likely the House of Representatives which he was otherwise on course to lose.
September 11, 2026
I agree.
Only the top 2% should attend university.
Trump could have offered the same amount in tax reductions, but simplicity is important because everybody understands.