In his book Chums, author Simon Kuper looks at the origins of our current political class, the people who have steered us to the independent utopia we currently live in. He traces their origins from Eton to Oxford University, the Bullingdon Club and the university’s Debating Society.

The likes of Boris Johnson, David Cameron and Jacob Rees-Mogg were all Etonians who cruised to unremarkable degrees at Oxford spending more time in the Debating Society than in lectures. This acted as a training ground for the combative debating chamber of the House of Commons. From Oxford they slide into a system which primes them for government. It’s not so much earned as expected.

Alongside those three, there are many more – of the sixteen Prime Minister since the war only three didn’t go to Oxford, there are also Labour ministers who followed the same path alongside journalists and advisors moulding the direction of the country.

There’s a sense of entitlement and a desire to protect the structures they and their forebears have benefitted from. They genuinely believe in their innate ability to succeed and right to rule, spending their education learning about the successes of people who are just like them in books written by historians with similar backgrounds. History is always written by the victors and all that.

What really struck me, is Kuper’s observation that from David Cameron onwards, we have a generation of leaders who have no real experience of managing anything of substance or any experience of wider society. From university, Cameron became an advisor in the Conservative Party, Johnson was a journalist, Rees-Mogg managed an investment fund. Liz Truss, Therese May and Rishi Sunak worked in finance for big, rich organisations.

Elites have always existed, but previous generations have had experience of leading armies through wars or of maintaining peace in unstable environments as diplomats and ambassadors. Industrialists built railways, bridges, factories. These things served to reduced the gap between the elites and wider society. They had, at least, some experience real logistics, getting jobs done and the impact it has before moving into politics. 

But whether it’s Brexit or a pandemic or migration or building forty hospitals or delivering public services, the current ruling elite can only sell these ideas in the abstract in a debating chamber or when campaigning; delivering anything tangible has proved to be beyond them.

In 1980, General Robert H Barrow said “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.” – there really is no alternative to real-life experience, understanding its complexities and nuances. Getting experience is time consuming, imprecise and will challenge what you really believe, but success is built on it.

Gatlin O’Donkor has played less than an hour of football this season, nearly half of that has been during injury time. But, for me, he’s been as impressive as any player on the pitch. For the final goal against Barnsley yesterday, O’Donkor bounced off the defender while playing in Tyler Goodrham to seal our third win in a week. It was a just reward for his work.

Against Derby he nearly did the same, but what’s really outstanding is the maturity of how he executes his role. There’s not a lot of glory, he knows he’s there to be aggressive and occupy defenders, to create open spaces that mean when the opposition is chasing a game, they can’t fully commit due to their vulnerabilities on the counter-attack.

Having led the line for a good proportion of last season, O’Donkor could have reacted to this adjustment by losing heart, considering it a step back. But, I wonder whether the real-life experience of last season has helped ease that transition by teaching him the value of sticking together, of working at the details, of being part of a system, or doing the right things even when the outcomes don’t work out.

There’s more to it than that, of course, in the early 2000s goalkeeper Richard Knight was brilliant, but never recovered from the trauma of relegation and conceding over 100 goals in a season. But, if you go back to the 1990s, we produced several very talented homegrown players – Joey Beauchamp, Chris Allen and Paul Powell, none of whom were able to step up to the next level. It was only when grafters like Ian Atkins came in did we start producing people like Sam Ricketts and Dean Whitehead, who actually went on to have long-term successful careers at the top of the game. Now there are a slew of ex-Oxford players playing regularly in the higher divisions. As awful as last season was, the longer term value of that experience may be a key element of our current success.

For O’Donkor, also read Tyler Goodrham and to a lesser extent Stefan Negru. Even the older heads may have benefitted from the trials of last season and that loss of focus. Yesterday only three players started who weren’t here last season. Where our political classes are dominated by people who are politicians first and deliverers of benefit second, the club pride themselves in developing people first and players second. Perhaps the real-life experiences of last season are helping to create an important element into their mental template of what brings success.