Upper Class Struggle at Lords as Priti Patel pays £45K to become a life MCC member
In October 2020 it was reported that Home Secretary Priti Patel had paid £45K to become a life member of the Marylebone Cricket Club(MCC). Which cricket team Ms Patel actually supports is unknown but officially she can now claim to pass the Tebbit Test.
Like many sporting bodies Lords and the MCC are suffering a shortfall of funds. Unlike many however they have very well heeled supporters who think nothing of paying up to £45K to help out and at the same time by-pass the lengthy wait to become a member. There are 18,000 members and 500 vacancies arose in the last year mainly because existing members had died (of old age).
The Financial Times (28.11.20 ) has a fascinating article on what is clearly an upper class struggle at Lords. It is firewalled but key points are summarised below if you don’t subscribe.
According to the FT MCC members divide between ‘the merely affluent and the super-rich. Those of the City versus those from the shires’.
There has been a petition to demand a vote of no confidence in Chair Gerald Corbett, who is also chair of the logistics group Sergo. One signatory describes the current MCC Committee as a ‘geriatric chumocracy’.
It was felt unfair that the 12,000 on the current waiting list for MCC membership have been bypassed by those with £45K to spare who have leapfrogged them. One MCC member who is banker told the FT ‘if you’re lucky enough to have some money then you have more choices than the poor people who don’t’. A critical member however commented that ‘Ive tried to count the amount of men who wear red trousers and there’s quite a few’
The MCC has 781 female members now including Ms Patel and it is ‘developing’ an action plan in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. The FT reports that the MCC has ‘temporarily’ removed a portrait and bust of Benjamin Aislabie the club’s first honorary secretary and a slave plantation owner.
The report is by Murad Ahmed the FT’s Sports Editor.
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