Chris Patten, Lord Patten of Barnes, is interviewed in this months Oxford Alumni News. He has served as Chancellor of the university since 2003. Chris Patten was elected as conservative MP for Bath in 1979 which is the year I matriculated at Oxford, and Bath is now our nearest city. Before the interview Patton had told Sky News that the Conservative Party was the oldest party in democratic history and has been reduced to rubble by awful fractures and lousy policy and a collapse of any sense of values. He said it wasn’t ruined by Rishi Sunak it was ruined by Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and others.
He also talks about a conspiracy of silence and the failure to tell the electorate that they can’t have everything they want, and that in the face of Faragism, silence that grows too loud for too long will have a terribly corrosive effect on democracy.
He shared a piece of advice he received from Rab Butler which is that in politics it is more important to be generous than efficient. He says that the most common conversation he has with alumni is about the person at Oxford who changed their lives, their tutor. That certainly resonates with me. Joe Todd was Engineering Fellow and Admissions Fellow when I was given my exhibition (baby scholarship). It was a mark of the man that he rang me to tell me the good news before telling my school. It was about half an hour later that my headmaster rang, thinking he was giving me the good news. He seemed rather taken aback by my, ‘yes I know.’ That suggests to me it was unusual.
Chris Patten had to finish his interview because he had to attend dinner at Teddy Hall (St Edmund Hall) my old college where he is officially a Visitor. I recall dining in hall when Harold MacMillan was dining in hall as Visitor. Our new prime minister Keir Starmer studied law at Teddy Hall in 1985, getting a post-graduate Bachelor of Civil Law degree. Oxford connections continue to resonate.