I’m not being flippant, because I couldn’t. Here, take Theresa May’s test.

I got 50%, scraping a third. To pass you need a solid first, 75%. So what conclusion should I draw? That I’m terrifically ignorant of Shakespeare, electoral law and the welfare system? Probably. But should that disqualify me, as it does for so many aspirant citizens, from being British?

In 1991 a skinny Somali boy stepped off the plane with his father, wholly ignorant of the customs, rules and language of the country for which 21 years later he would win two Olympic gold medals. Draped in the Union flag, who could begrudge the awesome Mo Farah the respect that fellow patriots owe him?

Cultural assimilation and social integration do not require a sound knowledge of trivia. We used to have a more American attitude to immigrants; namely, that their costly and perilous journey to these shores itself demonstrated a willingness to become British.  Later, amidst fears that Enoch Powell’s infamous warning would prove prophetic, the government would limit mass immigration, a policy itself later reversed by New Labour’s acquiescence to EU expansion.

Mo, who Cherwell interviewed in April, had a British father, so his path to the UK was assured. But there are thousands like him – many from Commonwealth countries with good English skills – who are denied the citizenship they fully deserve and we need. At its most acute hospitals now lack the qualified doctors who are ready and willing to work here. Less tangibly but no less seriously, we are losing out on the talent of thousands of tomorrow’s business, cultural and sports stars who will not get into the UK under the Home Secretary’s rules.

There is indeed ‘good’ immigration and ‘bad’ immigration, but a general knowledge test is hopeless at distinguishing the two. The ‘points’ system adopted by the last government, which prioritises skilled workers, is closer to the mark but it neglects the ability of ‘unskilled’ workers to strive and pursue self-improvement in their adopted country. This is especially true considering they do not impose a burden on public services and do not push down wages.

The truth is that good citizenship – and this applies to us all – rests on hard work, community identification and a willingness to ‘muck in’, to make sacrifices. How on earth do you devise a test for all of that? Except winning a gold medal, obviously. 

Another week, another bashing of Oxford in the national media. No doubt a lot of you watched the beeb’s Young Bright and on the Right, nose pressed up against the screen in case you were somehow unwittingly caught in a background shot. This wasn’t bad publicity, not for Oxford nor for Joe Cook who, unlike his cringingly, pathologically awkward Cambridge equivalent, actually came across as, if not likeable, at least sympathetic and well-intentioned, which is not bad for an aspirant Tory politician. It was of course horrible publicity for OCA as a whole whose image – sometimes, though not always accurate – of affected Etonian drawls, of 1930s fancy dress and aloof snobbery, has been tarnished once again.

The program may have examined this peculiar little world, but it never tried to explain why on earth it should actually exist: after all, the Tory party has been in power for most of the past century, it represents a vast chunk of British political opinion, and a perfectly valid one. In most universities the Conservative association is a political discussion and campaigning group of a similar stature and size to the Labour club. So it isn’t immediately clear why its main organisation in this university should resemble a massive game of let’s-all-pretend-to-be-30s-aristocrats.

In part the problem is self-fulfilling. Perhaps as a (very loose) part of the pinko, lefty Oxford media establishment my impression has been skewed, but amongst most of the people I know admitting you are an active member of OCA is like admitting you sell crack to five year old orphans: deeply unfashionable. Involvement may lose you friends but you’ll certainly keep your virginity. This paper and its rival (the FoxSpew? CocksGoo? Something like that) have certainly contributed to this with our relentless attacks on the club.. This antagonism  undoubtedly takes much of the responsibility for OCA’s current state because it means the only people willing to join are those who do not care what the rest of the university thinks of them: the very brave and the very isolated, both of whom tend to come across as odd and maladjusted. And, if it is OCA against the world anyway then why should they bend to better fit what their enemies consider is acceptable? Like the rejected fourth son in the attic we have refused to engage with OCA and so they have gone a bit kooky.

But the student news gets all het up about a lot of things, and normally the subjects of their (our?) scorn are quick to recover, it is unclear why OCA’s reputation should be so much more fragile. It seems there must be some other factor more inherent to this university that contributes to this OCA-bashing.

Whereas YB&otR may have focused on two working-class lads with very conservative views, I, along with a disproportionately large number of people in this university are the converse: private/grammar school kids on the left. Racked with liberal guilt at our privileged secondary education and our perhaps undeserved places at this heinously elitist institution we feel we desperately have to prove our left wing credentials. We rant about the right and mock OCA, desperate not to appear posh. I recall one fresher responding to an inquiry about where he went to school: “I went to a school in Winchester.” “You mean Winchester School?” “Yes.” he responded ashamedly. Joe himself summarised it well: when asked about his childhood shift to right he explained “I was struggling to determine my own life and to go against people’s expectations”. For many of us this works in the opposite direction, we want to go against all the poshbridge assumptions and prove we’re not all Tory toffs. Hence it is unsurprising that in this very self-consciously elitist university, this kind of ‘boo! Down with the Tory scum!’ rhetoric has marginalised the organised right into the peculiar little spectacle we saw paraded on BBC2.

This is a very unhealthy state of affairs. Oxford has long history of active student politics, and it is a shame that one side of the political spectrum should lack serious representation. We should engage the right in discussion not just bash them. We should adapt Cameron’s adage and hug a Harrodian, embrace an Etonian, cuddle a knight. If we remove some of the stigma of joining the Oxford Right perhaps it will grow into a reasonable force, or at least lose the compulsion to look mental on national television. And if you still need something to show that you’re really, really left wing, I don’t know: maybe write an article for the student media about how all drugs should be legal or something.

This summer I have a Proper Job; I go to meetings, shake hands with people and attempt to sound serious and knowledgeable on the phone. But it always strikes me as comic when I put my sensible blouse and skirt on in the morning and head out to shuffle along with all the other commuters: I’m barely more than a kid in a suit! Has anyone noticed that I’m not really a bona fide adult yet?

However, I’ve asked around and apparently this feeling doesn’t really go away. It also seems to be fairly well-founded, because lots of adults really don’t know what they’re doing and really do behave like confused or petulant children. In fact, one of the alarming aspects of getting older is realising that Grown Ups aren’t really all that Grown Up at all. They don’t have all the answers that I hoped came with adulthood. Nobody turned up on my 18^th birthday and explained the secrets of the world to me.

There must be experts out there, right? You know, people who really know how the world works, people who approach life with self-certainty. And even those who feel like frauds in the adult world can surely get things right (I hope), even if by sheer luck. But there does seem to be a strong contingent of people who really are kids in suits, or, worse, who think they’re grown ups while actually not having the faintest clue what they’re doing.

This shocking revelation somewhat explains why things keep going belly-up. The economic crisis? Well, it turns out that economists are just kids in suits, messing around with spreadsheets, pointing at charts and making self-assured guesses. And then their bluff was called, spectacularly, and we went into financial meltdown. They’re still floundering in the dark, even now. Take the euro: two hundred German economists recently signed an appeal against a euro banking union, and two hundred signed in its support, while eleven economists… signed both. Brilliant.

Politics represents the classic case of kids in suits. Just watch them all at PMQ’s, jeering and cheering and stamping their feet, even if they don’t have the faintest idea what it is they’re lambasting. And look at the Cabinet, blithering this way and that, making U-turns and playing tit-for-tat. The Thick of It, soon to return to our screens, could almost be a documentary. All the while our Prime Minister is honing his skills on Angry Birds, the iPad game enjoyed by millions….of eight year olds.

And at the risk of indulging in banker-bashing, the financial sector does seem to offer some good examples. In 1995 Nick Leeson single-handedly destroyed Barings Bank by losing £827 million, but rogue trading continues to thrive; last year, Kweku Adoboli lost UBS around £1.3 million. The funny thing is that their bosses didn’t spot it, nor did most of the financial bigwigs spot the subprime mortgage crisis heading their way, nor did they know anything about Libor fixing (so they say). It seems that boardrooms across the world might really be staffed by toddlers in suits, doing a bit of business before naptime.

Higher education may broaden the mind and sharpen the intellect, but the top universities are also really good at training their students to argue powerfully and sound persuasive, even if their position is shaky. Once students leave the confines of their university and start to make their way in the world, this skill helps the amateurs to disguise themselves amongst the professionals, cloaked in an air of seeming to know what they’re talking about. Oxford says: “Here’s a half-useful reading list, here’s all the books ever published, in a week you’ll have to defend your essay against the world expert in your subject: GO.” You can’t possibly become an authority on the topic in a week, but by learning the fine art of blagging, you might just get away with it every now and then. It’s a life skill in the making.

It is telling therefore that rump of the Establishment are products of the Oxbridge system. They won at the game of Pretending To Know What You’re Talking About, thereby qualifying them for the upper echelons of life.

And so the Kids in Suits Brigade muddle along. Look carefully and you can see them running the world (and making a mess of it – for more info, see: History), acting the part of lawyers and teachers and salesmen (without really knowing what they’re doing), and populating offices across the nation, presenting PowerPoint slides with impossibly complicated diagrams to other people who’ll nod knowingly but remain completely clueless, hoping nobody will notice.

It’s a scary thought that the world is so full of people who have no idea what they’re doing. But there are some straws to clutch at for comfort:

a)      The world has always been full of clueless people doing clueless things, from the Lords who ordered the Charge of the Light Brigade, to Rupert Murdoch buying Myspace. And yet we’ve managed to get this far.

b)      If you feel like a kid in a suit, you’re not alone – and at least you know it. This self-awareness should stop you doing anything breathtakingly stupid.

However, this does not detract from the fact that I’m not really an adult, and so you should probably dismiss this article entirely: I’m just pretending to know what I’m talking about.