Kwasi Kwarteng on the British Empire from The Economist

In Sudan, a notably snobbish spot, one-third of all colonial political officers were the sons of clergymen and half of those recruited between 1902 and 1914 had a “Blue” (a sporting distinction) from Oxford or Cambridge, leading to the quip that Sudan was a land of “Blacks ruled by Blues”. In the 1930s, only officials able to play polo could hope for advancement in the Sudanese province of Darfur: in the same period, Darfur had just one primary school. In 1916, Mr Kwarteng notes, David Lloyd George, the humble son of a Welsh Baptist minister, could become Britain’s prime minister, but would have stood no chance of being governor of colonial Nigeria.