More than half of Burnham’s first Cabinet Oxbridge-educated

More than half of Andy Burnham’s newly announced Cabinet attended the universities of Cambridge or Oxford, making it the most Oxbridge-heavy administration of recent years. 

Fifty-five per cent of the new Labour prime minister’s most senior appointees attended the country’s two oldest and most prestigious universities, up “substantially” from the previous Cabinet that served under Keir Starmer, 38 per cent of whom went to one of the two institutions. 

Burnham’s Oxbridge-educated selection also tops Liz Truss’ Cabinet, 35 per cent of whom went to one of the two institutions, and those who served in Rishi Sunak’s first Cabinet, 45 per cent of whom did, analysis by the social mobility charity the Sutton Trust found. 

Meanwhile, nearly a quarter (24 per cent) of Burnham’s top ministers attended fee-paying schools, versus just 8 per cent of Starmer’s first Cabinet – which was the most comprehensively educated in British history.

Burnham, who studied English at Cambridge, is himself notable for bucking a nearly century-long trend of prime ministers to have graduated from Oxford. The last Cambridge graduate to hold the office was Stanley Baldwin, whose premiership ended in 1937.

Meanwhile, just two of the most senior ministers unveiled on 20 July did not attend university – former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, and chief whip Anneliese Midgeley. In Starmer’s first Cabinet, Rayner was also the only person not to have a degree.

New education secretary and close Burnham ally Lucy Powell did a one-year stint at Oxford before transferring into her second year studying chemistry at King’s College London. She has previously said she felt like a “fish out of water” at the elite university, and that she “didn’t thrive” at Oxford “at all”.

“I was a state-educated, northern girl doing science. It’s not an environment I was used to,” she told GB News, in 2021.

Besides their Oxbridge-educated peers, everyone in the Cabinet attended Russell Group universities except for leader of the House of Commons Alan Campbell, who went to Lancaster University, and Angela Smith, who attended the former Leicester Polytechnic, now De Montfort University. She becomes leader of the House of Lords.

georgia.luckhurst@timeshighereducation.com