Voters Don't Care If MPs Did Drugs Or Posed Nude, But Attending Eton Is A Problem

Voters Don't Care If MPs Did Drugs Or Posed Nude, But Attending Eton Is A Problem
British Prime Minister David Cameron outside 10 Downing Street in central London, on February 27, 2014. AFP PHOTO / CARL COURT (Photo credit should read CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images)
British Prime Minister David Cameron outside 10 Downing Street in central London, on February 27, 2014. AFP PHOTO / CARL COURT (Photo credit should read CARL COURT/AFP/Getty Images)
CARL COURT via Getty Images

Voters find politicians who went to Eton to be more unsuited to power than those who were part of a far-right or communist party in their youth, did drugs, or posed for naked photographs.

The findings revealed in a poll conducted by YouGov for The Times found that 38% of those asked thought having attended the elite public school, as David Cameron did, meant the politician would not understand how normal people live and was therefore unsuited to office.

By contrast, only 15% of those asked were concerned about a politician had been a member of a far-right party and just 10% were worried about a politician having been a communist.

Only 13% cared whether a politician had taken cocaine or heroin in their youth and just 5% were bothered if the MP had posed in the nude for an adult magazine when they were young.

In a blog posted on The Huffington Post UK, YouGov president Peter Kellner explained: "For most people, what matters are those things that influence the capacity of senior politicians to understand normal people, empathise with their difficulties and tackle their problems.

"Other stories, especially to do with sex and anything that happened long ago, might excite news editors and amuse their readers and viewers, but don't really persuade voters to dump the targets of such disclosures."

Keller added: "The one issue on which there is a distinct regional pattern concerns the controversy that triggered this survey in the first place: the cluster of old Etonians around the Prime Minister. This offends Londoners least. Dislike of this phenomenon rises the further people live away from London, and his highest of all in Scotland."

Cameron has long had to fight off claims that his Eton education means he is unable to understand the lives of ordinary voters. The problem has been multiplied by his decision to surround himself with other old-Etonians.

One Tory MP recently complained: "There are six people writing the manifesto and five of them went to Eton; the other went to St Paul’s."

The YouGov survey found that the biggest worry for voters was MPs who had never had a "real" job outside of politics or those that had exploited loopholes to minimise their tax bill.

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