A book published this week by Paris-based British journalist, writer and academic, Peter Gumbel, claims the Gallic corridors of power and business are blocked and occupied by a self-serving and unaccountable elite from higher social backgrounds, reports The Guardian.
Left, right or centre, France's politicians are a ruling elite that resembles an ancien regime aristocracy desperately clinging to its privilege and power, according to a new book by a Paris-based British author.
If you thought David Cameron and his Eton and Oxbridge clique were posh toffs out of touch with the real world, take a look over the Channel at the "tiny number of brilliant and charming men and women" who constitute the Gallic ruling class, says university lecturer Peter Gumbel.
In his new book, France's Got Talent: the Woeful Consequences of French Elitism, published on Wednesday, Gumbel takes a hard swipe at France's new nobility: the fewer than 500 graduates of elite schools that dominate the highest echelons of business and politics.
Often arrogant, untouchable, unaccountable – and almost certainly unsackable – Gumbel says France is still controlled by an "old boys' network", that makes the British government and business Britain appear a model of social diversity.
Just three years after he rattled the French establishment with a scathing indictment of the country's highly selective education system, Gumbel has turned his attention to the Gallic corridors of power and business.
"Since the Revolution, France has had this mythology that it is a meritocracy, that anyone can rise to the highest positions in society by virtue of their intellectual brilliance," Gumbel told the Guardian.
"The idea is the brightest kids in the class can go on to run the country, but it doesn't work. Those in this elite come from much the same upper middle-class background and they are not running the country well.
"They may be smart and swots and get grammar and maths but they don't have experience or, necessarily, ability."
Gumbel added: "David Cameron gets a hard time for surrounding himself with old Etonian buddies and being out of touch, but compared with François Hollande, who has surrounded himself with his old classmates, Cameron seems harmless. In France it's still a system of jobs-for-the-boys that was prevalent in Britain back in the 1950s."
Gumbel says the book is aimed at the disillusioned French public, which is fed up with Hollande and turning to the extreme right and left in increasing numbers, but which "may not be aware of the extent to which the elitist culture it endures is anything but normal by international standards".
He said: "It's not so much a glass ceiling as a concrete one. And with a tiny number of people coming up to run everything, everyone else feels frustrated and left behind."
Gumbel's previous book, They Shoot School Kids, Don't They?, detailed how only about 5% of France's top students get into classe préparatoire [preparatory classes], the "military-style boot camps" that provide intense grounding for the country's 200 elite grandes écoles.
The book was widely reviewed in France and prompted an invitation to the Élysée Palace to talk about education reforms.
"Ever since I arrived in Paris in 2002 … I have been surprised by the pervasive culture of elitism in France. If this country were a TV show, it would be France's Got Talent, a fiercely competitive contest to show off how clever you are," Gumbel writes.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.
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