UKIP’s own privately educated clique

The party attacked "privately educated" Times journalists. But its leader, treasurer, a third of its MEPs and all of its peers were similary well-schooled.

By George Eaton

(Photo By Nigel Farage talks to the media as he canvasses for votes in the South Shields by-election in April 2013. Photograph: Getty Images.)

In an attempt to portray the Times’s investigation of Nigel Farage’s EU allowances as part of a sinister establishment plot, UKIP yesterday published a series of disparaging profiles of some of the paper’s senior journalists (Daniel Finkelstein, Matthew Parris, Alice Thomson, Hugo Rifkind, Rachel Sylvester, Tim Montgomerie and Alexi Mostrous).

It drew particular attention to the fact that six of the seven were privately educated, an odd line of attack given that its leader was schooled at the none-too-shabby Dulwich College. And Farage isn’t the only senior Ukip figure to have passed through the nefarious public school system.

Two of the party’s other MEPs, Stuart Agnew and William Legge, were educated at Gordonstoun and Eton respectively. In addition, all three of its peers were privately schooled (Eton, Stowe and Institut Le Rosey), its treasurer, Stuart Wheeler, is another Old Etonian and its defence spokesman, Alexander Fermor-Hesketh, was educated at Ampleforth College.

As I said, a dubious line of attack indeed.

Here’s the full list.

Nigel Farage (Leader): Dulwich College

Stuart Wheeler (Treasurer): Eton College