Oakeshott warned that politics is a practical activity, where tacit knowledge acquired with experience and close observation is the primary criterion for success. The idea that there is some set of reading that will serve as a guide is a misplaced “rationalism.”
Having PMs with PPE (Cameron, Sunak, Wilson), Law (Attlee, Blair) doesn't appear to be an advantage over no degree at all (Major, Callaghan, Churchill (?)).
Eg Pitt the Younger seems to have been the last prominent prime minister not to go to school before university. Bertrand Russell was perhaps the last major figure in public life to receive a classic informal education from tutors at home.
Blair practised as a commercial/employment barrister for 5 or so years before becoming an MP. He didn’t ‘defend or prosecute someone’ as he wasn’t a criminal lawyer. But he was a ‘practising attorney’ who appeared in court.
Many books warn of the dangers of bookishness unmoored from reality (Bovary, Casaubon, don Quixote). And Dr Johnson’s essay on the young scholar entering society has particular weight given his own trajectory. A proper appreciation of literature includes an appreciation of its limits. Henry James may well have been right to say that art makes life, makes interest and makes importance. But it does not put food on your table.
Robert Habeck, who served as Germany's Federal Minister for Economic Affairs from 2021 to 2025, holds a doctorate in literary studies. He wrote his master's thesis on Casimir Ulrich Boehlendorff (1775-1825). Before his political career, he published children's books. His tenure as economy minister has naturally drawn mixed reviews. He ran as the candidate for chancellor in the 2025 federal election. After receiving only 22.6 percent of the vote in his constituency, he withdrew from politics.
My English degree has given me the ability to analyse texts and ideas and weigh them up, and argue my case. Which I would say is pretty useful for a PM. My day job often involves troubleshooting issues with our library catalogue - analytical skills from my degree are useful there.
And putting together webpages that actually make sense to users - not the team writing the copy. Empathy comes in, there, which is something English lit teaches you as you read fiction and empathise with the characters - you become good at seeing things from others' perspectives. Something politicians really need to become better at!
Great comment and I heartily agree. I shall complete my English Literature degree this time next year at the age of 71. My one regret is having had to muddle through so many years without the skills of analysis, understanding and expression that I have only recently acquired. Heigh-ho…
I’m with Mary Warnock re. Thatcher the Milk Snatcher, but, to Thatcher’s credit, her Chemistry degree meant she immediately comprehended the importance of the newly discovered hole in the ozone layer and cajoled other world leaders into taking meaningful action. In our current environmental crisis, the more Prime Ministers with science degrees the better, as far as I’m concerned.
I am reminded of some lines from literature addressing the tradeoffs between the practical and the poetic, if you will:
“Monseigneur, you are always anxious to make everything useful, but yet here is a
garden box that is of no use. It has flowers and not vegetables. It would be much better to
have salads there than bouquets.”
“Madame Magloire,” replied the bishop, “you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a moment’s silence, “perhaps more so.”
Burnham has had a career in Parliament - a steady rise in parliamentary politics before coming second to the notorious Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader in 2015 - and then two terms as Mayor of Greater Manchester, a real administrative position, in the years since he left Westminster. He himself does not credit his degree in English as one of the influences shaping him (which are, in his order, his loyalty to the Liverpool football club, the Labour Party and his Catholic upbringing). English is not a vocational degree subject generally, like Classics in that respect, but it does portend a more impressive command of rhetoric than poor Sir Keir Starmer could muster.
As Bill Shankly, the manager of Liverpool, said (or some variations thereon), “If Everton were playing at the bottom of the garden, I'd pull the curtains,” (I suspect the feeling was mutual), and “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
Sorry, l'm a Yank and loathe team sports, so l got the teams mixed up. The important thing is that his favourite soccer team is more important to him than what he read at uni.
Unlike with Boris Johnson, who obviously made a lot out of having studied Classics at Oxford, is there any record of Burnham crediting his English degree from Cambridge with much? Is he known for his language, rhetoric, originality or ability to tell stories? It hadn’t really seemed that way to me.
Apparently Burnham is more relatable than Sir Keir, hence he can tap into the populist trend in UK politics. But who knows? He won his recent election impressively enough that the Labour MPs seem to think he will help enough of them retain their seats in 2029, or earlier if he wants a new general election. Unlike Boris, of course, Burnham is neither a journalist (an elastic term for Boris, actually) nor a buffoon.
Before his barnstorming comeback in the Midlothian campaign, Gladstone took a few years out to write up his eccentric theory of how Homer had predicted the Gospels. It’s kind of like if Andy Burnham had spent his years as mayor of Manchester writing a book with a startling new theory on George Eliot… which, er, didn’t happen.
Politician here. Nobody in academia ever said it was good that Boris Johnson had a classics degree because the vast majority of those in academia are instinctively on the left and only wanted to be seen to be publicly against Boris Johnson and the Conservative party.
Those studying English literature are projecting the good qualities they perceive of this subject on to Andy Burnham because he is on the left and shares their political views.
There is nothing unusual about that, it is what humans do, but both are as flawed as expecting a whole host of toolmakers to rave about Keir Starmer's good qualities because he was the son of one.
But neither are indicative of the qualities to be a good politician, let alone Prime Minister.
I think this debate is very similar to the one I used to have in my business career about "what makes a great business leader". There is no one single answer, but a certain number of things that would absolutely disqualify you.
Politics is much more complicated than business or any course of academic study. Politics is also the ONLY profession where ordinary people actively denigrate people having any experience in it before trying to do it. Can you imagine people saying, "Most doctors should have less medical experience" or "airline pilots should have less flying hours".
The first requirement of being a succesful politician is to listen - for hours - to people who would never dream of doing the job expressing their opinions about how you should do it. That's the glory of democracy for you! Even better if you are a woman because men do love to explain things to women, especially on their own doorstep, when it is pouring with rain and you are standing there trying to persuade them to vote for you during an election campaign.
Beyond that - you need a shed load of resilience, tolerance, ability to listen, understand bond markets, international diplomacy and pothole budgets, build and manage a team of egos, perform on the media and in the Chamber, listen to your back benchers, survive multiple rebellions to remove you, negotiate impossible trade offs, and never see your family.
And do all that on by what is today's standards a low salary for a professional role with no time off.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Gladstone, the only British Prime Minister (as far as I know) who actually published original literary scholarship (on Homer) while he was Prime Minister. And a pretty good Prime Minister, in my view ... though I'm not sure one can realistically claim that it was BECAUSE of his Homeric scholarship.
A reasonably important correction to articles like this, and others: Burnham read English at Cambridge; there is no degree there called English Literature. Although a great deal of the work is what could be defined as 'Eng Lit', it's be no means all. Every student has to study for a foreign language paper in their first and second year (a very few do Anglo-Saxon instead). Most of the papers in Part 1 are pretty historical, bring called things like 'Literature and its Background <insert 200-year date range>'. The key paper in the third year is called 'Tragedy', whose core is ancient Greek tragedy (in translation), supplemented by non-Anglophone writers such as Racine, Seneca, Ibsen and Chekhov (and no, you can't rely on Shakespeare for this paper as everyone has already done one on him the year before). Finally, in the final year a great many students choose to do more general papers like 'Moralism' and 'Critical Theory'. So, the degree is certainly no narrowly 'literary' course as seems to be being implied here.
Some of us Australians long for eloquence, less buffoonery, more substance. The problem is that the media like performative gobblespeak, largely because too many of them don’t know George Eliot , Karl Marx or Admiral Dheng. Could we be sure they know who Mao Tse Tung was? Most, sadly, would never have heard of Judith Wright.
Oakeshott warned that politics is a practical activity, where tacit knowledge acquired with experience and close observation is the primary criterion for success. The idea that there is some set of reading that will serve as a guide is a misplaced “rationalism.”
I thought Johnson missed out on a first.
Having PMs with PPE (Cameron, Sunak, Wilson), Law (Attlee, Blair) doesn't appear to be an advantage over no degree at all (Major, Callaghan, Churchill (?)).
Have we ever had a Mathematical prime minister?
Yes there’s a good case for lack of formal education being an advantage
Eg Pitt the Younger seems to have been the last prominent prime minister not to go to school before university. Bertrand Russell was perhaps the last major figure in public life to receive a classic informal education from tutors at home.
Lord Salisbury—and his nephew Balfour was a philosopher.
A great PM
Salisbury combined PM with foreign secretary, didn't he?
He did
Yes, Rishi Sunak
Lincoln did alright with a few years of grade school.
There’s a fun graph showing negative correlation between years of education and eminence in US Presidents
Yes but Lincoln was a lawyer. Whether you like it or not, it’s good background for a politician.
Sure
Where your graph may work the best, Woodrow Wilson , perhaps our best educated president.
Lincoln was also a practising attorney unlike the recent run of lawyer-politicians (Clinton, Blair, Obama).
They all practised
Did Blair or Obama ever defend or prosecute someone? Perhaps I should have said trial lawyer
Blair practised as a commercial/employment barrister for 5 or so years before becoming an MP. He didn’t ‘defend or prosecute someone’ as he wasn’t a criminal lawyer. But he was a ‘practising attorney’ who appeared in court.
Many books warn of the dangers of bookishness unmoored from reality (Bovary, Casaubon, don Quixote). And Dr Johnson’s essay on the young scholar entering society has particular weight given his own trajectory. A proper appreciation of literature includes an appreciation of its limits. Henry James may well have been right to say that art makes life, makes interest and makes importance. But it does not put food on your table.
sounds like my mom.
Robert Habeck, who served as Germany's Federal Minister for Economic Affairs from 2021 to 2025, holds a doctorate in literary studies. He wrote his master's thesis on Casimir Ulrich Boehlendorff (1775-1825). Before his political career, he published children's books. His tenure as economy minister has naturally drawn mixed reviews. He ran as the candidate for chancellor in the 2025 federal election. After receiving only 22.6 percent of the vote in his constituency, he withdrew from politics.
This is the best comment
Thank you!
My English degree has given me the ability to analyse texts and ideas and weigh them up, and argue my case. Which I would say is pretty useful for a PM. My day job often involves troubleshooting issues with our library catalogue - analytical skills from my degree are useful there.
And putting together webpages that actually make sense to users - not the team writing the copy. Empathy comes in, there, which is something English lit teaches you as you read fiction and empathise with the characters - you become good at seeing things from others' perspectives. Something politicians really need to become better at!
Great comment and I heartily agree. I shall complete my English Literature degree this time next year at the age of 71. My one regret is having had to muddle through so many years without the skills of analysis, understanding and expression that I have only recently acquired. Heigh-ho…
I’m with Mary Warnock re. Thatcher the Milk Snatcher, but, to Thatcher’s credit, her Chemistry degree meant she immediately comprehended the importance of the newly discovered hole in the ozone layer and cajoled other world leaders into taking meaningful action. In our current environmental crisis, the more Prime Ministers with science degrees the better, as far as I’m concerned.
I am reminded of some lines from literature addressing the tradeoffs between the practical and the poetic, if you will:
“Monseigneur, you are always anxious to make everything useful, but yet here is a
garden box that is of no use. It has flowers and not vegetables. It would be much better to
have salads there than bouquets.”
“Madame Magloire,” replied the bishop, “you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.” He added after a moment’s silence, “perhaps more so.”
—from Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo.
Burnham has had a career in Parliament - a steady rise in parliamentary politics before coming second to the notorious Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader in 2015 - and then two terms as Mayor of Greater Manchester, a real administrative position, in the years since he left Westminster. He himself does not credit his degree in English as one of the influences shaping him (which are, in his order, his loyalty to the Liverpool football club, the Labour Party and his Catholic upbringing). English is not a vocational degree subject generally, like Classics in that respect, but it does portend a more impressive command of rhetoric than poor Sir Keir Starmer could muster.
Burnham will be mortified if he reads this. He supports Everton.
As Bill Shankly, the manager of Liverpool, said (or some variations thereon), “If Everton were playing at the bottom of the garden, I'd pull the curtains,” (I suspect the feeling was mutual), and “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
But like you, I can’t bring myself to agree.
Sorry, l'm a Yank and loathe team sports, so l got the teams mixed up. The important thing is that his favourite soccer team is more important to him than what he read at uni.
Unlike with Boris Johnson, who obviously made a lot out of having studied Classics at Oxford, is there any record of Burnham crediting his English degree from Cambridge with much? Is he known for his language, rhetoric, originality or ability to tell stories? It hadn’t really seemed that way to me.
Apparently Burnham is more relatable than Sir Keir, hence he can tap into the populist trend in UK politics. But who knows? He won his recent election impressively enough that the Labour MPs seem to think he will help enough of them retain their seats in 2029, or earlier if he wants a new general election. Unlike Boris, of course, Burnham is neither a journalist (an elastic term for Boris, actually) nor a buffoon.
Before his barnstorming comeback in the Midlothian campaign, Gladstone took a few years out to write up his eccentric theory of how Homer had predicted the Gospels. It’s kind of like if Andy Burnham had spent his years as mayor of Manchester writing a book with a startling new theory on George Eliot… which, er, didn’t happen.
Politician here. Nobody in academia ever said it was good that Boris Johnson had a classics degree because the vast majority of those in academia are instinctively on the left and only wanted to be seen to be publicly against Boris Johnson and the Conservative party.
Those studying English literature are projecting the good qualities they perceive of this subject on to Andy Burnham because he is on the left and shares their political views.
There is nothing unusual about that, it is what humans do, but both are as flawed as expecting a whole host of toolmakers to rave about Keir Starmer's good qualities because he was the son of one.
But neither are indicative of the qualities to be a good politician, let alone Prime Minister.
I think this debate is very similar to the one I used to have in my business career about "what makes a great business leader". There is no one single answer, but a certain number of things that would absolutely disqualify you.
Politics is much more complicated than business or any course of academic study. Politics is also the ONLY profession where ordinary people actively denigrate people having any experience in it before trying to do it. Can you imagine people saying, "Most doctors should have less medical experience" or "airline pilots should have less flying hours".
The first requirement of being a succesful politician is to listen - for hours - to people who would never dream of doing the job expressing their opinions about how you should do it. That's the glory of democracy for you! Even better if you are a woman because men do love to explain things to women, especially on their own doorstep, when it is pouring with rain and you are standing there trying to persuade them to vote for you during an election campaign.
Beyond that - you need a shed load of resilience, tolerance, ability to listen, understand bond markets, international diplomacy and pothole budgets, build and manage a team of egos, perform on the media and in the Chamber, listen to your back benchers, survive multiple rebellions to remove you, negotiate impossible trade offs, and never see your family.
And do all that on by what is today's standards a low salary for a professional role with no time off.
Ps this is written with my tongue in cheek...
I'm surprised you didn't mention Gladstone, the only British Prime Minister (as far as I know) who actually published original literary scholarship (on Homer) while he was Prime Minister. And a pretty good Prime Minister, in my view ... though I'm not sure one can realistically claim that it was BECAUSE of his Homeric scholarship.
Boris was mortified to get a mouldy Second
He was viva’d for a first, didn’t get one
Good to know that he can read, I suppose.
A reasonably important correction to articles like this, and others: Burnham read English at Cambridge; there is no degree there called English Literature. Although a great deal of the work is what could be defined as 'Eng Lit', it's be no means all. Every student has to study for a foreign language paper in their first and second year (a very few do Anglo-Saxon instead). Most of the papers in Part 1 are pretty historical, bring called things like 'Literature and its Background <insert 200-year date range>'. The key paper in the third year is called 'Tragedy', whose core is ancient Greek tragedy (in translation), supplemented by non-Anglophone writers such as Racine, Seneca, Ibsen and Chekhov (and no, you can't rely on Shakespeare for this paper as everyone has already done one on him the year before). Finally, in the final year a great many students choose to do more general papers like 'Moralism' and 'Critical Theory'. So, the degree is certainly no narrowly 'literary' course as seems to be being implied here.
I thought Macmillan went to bed with a Trollope, as (almost) did Bojo.
Some of us Australians long for eloquence, less buffoonery, more substance. The problem is that the media like performative gobblespeak, largely because too many of them don’t know George Eliot , Karl Marx or Admiral Dheng. Could we be sure they know who Mao Tse Tung was? Most, sadly, would never have heard of Judith Wright.