Sources and Notes: Who Is Allowed to Succeed?
This page accompanies the GOOD Thoughts article The Myth of Meritocracy: Who Is Allowed to Succeed?
The article distinguishes between allegations, institutional findings and established facts. Inclusion here does not imply agreement with every argument made by a source. Links were last checked on 23 August 2026.
Jason Arday: appointment and public biography
University of Cambridge: “Jason Arday appointed Professor of Sociology of Education” — Cambridge’s original announcement of Arday’s appointment. It records the biographical claims promoted at the time, including his autism, delayed speech and literacy, age and social background.
University of Cambridge statement, 7 August 2026 — the university’s statement following Arday’s resignation.
University of Cambridge statement from the Vice-Chancellor, 12 August 2026 — the university’s later statement concerning the case.
Jason Arday’s resignation letter, published by Good Law Project — Arday’s account of the allegations, earlier investigations, press coverage and his decision to resign.
Academic allegations and investigations
The Guardian: Cambridge professor Jason Arday resigns amid accusations of plagiarism — reports the resignation, allegations and Arday’s responses.
The Guardian: Cambridge announces investigation into professor accused of plagiarism — reports Cambridge’s investigation and the outcome of Liverpool John Moores University’s earlier process: the misconduct allegation was not upheld and the citation problems were attributed to “honest and reasonable error”. The LJMU panel report was confidential and has not been published, so the article attributes this account rather than presenting the report as a document independently examined by the author.
Retraction Watch: Cambridge professor faces plagiarism allegations — describes textual comparisons and the developing allegations. These remained allegations and should not be confused with a completed institutional finding.
The Guardian: detailed examination of claims surrounding Arday — reports questions concerning academic work and elements of Arday’s public biography.
The Guardian: the rise and fall of Jason Arday — a broader chronology of his career, public profile and resignation.
Death and scale of coverage
The Guardian: Jason Arday found dead after resigning from Cambridge — reports that his death was treated by police as unexpected but not suspicious and that a file was prepared for the coroner.
Associated Press: coverage of the Arday case — reports Professor Steven Barnett’s analysis identifying 289 mainstream press stories in 22 days, with almost two-thirds published after Arday resigned.
Nathan Cofnas and the meaning of meritocracy
Varsity: Nathan Cofnas and race-based claims about meritocracy — records Cofnas’s claim that, under what he called a true meritocracy, Black people would “disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment” and that the number of Black professors at Harvard would approach zero.
Varsity: Cambridge ends its association with Nathan Cofnas — background to the controversy surrounding Cofnas’s writing and Cambridge affiliation.
The article quotes Cofnas because his stated theory is relevant to the wider use being made of the allegations. His views do not determine whether any particular textual or biographical claim concerning Arday was accurate.
Sport, running and visible performance
The Professional Footballers’ Association: the Rooney Rule — discusses the continuing rarity with which candidates from ethnically diverse backgrounds are appointed to management and head-coach positions.
The Football Association: Football Leadership Diversity Code, year three report — reports diversity data and recruitment outcomes among participating English clubs and football organisations.
The Guardian: Stephen Lawrence scholarship and football’s leadership gap — reports figures comparing Black representation among Premier League players with representation in managerial and executive positions.
University of Liverpool: why are there so few Black football managers? — research commentary on the contrast between representation on the pitch and in management.
The passage about running is an argument, not a claim that athletics is free of unequal opportunity. Coaching, facilities, finance, nationality, sporting culture and selection all matter. The narrower point is that a stopwatch makes the final performance unusually visible and difficult to reinterpret. The article deliberately rejects the idea that the success of athletes from several distinct Black populations can responsibly be reduced to race.
Leicester City and the presentation of achievement
Anadolu Agency: Leicester City put up for sale — reports how sales material emphasised the club’s promotions, trophies, facilities and potential while omitting its League One position.
GOOD Thoughts: How Do You Sell a Football Club? — the earlier article from which the Leicester City example is drawn.
This comparison is expressly limited. Selective self-presentation is not equivalent to plagiarism, fabricated research or false qualifications. It illustrates the much more common practice of placing true or arguable achievements in the most favourable possible frame.
Boris Johnson: accountability and educational advantage
House of Commons Committee of Privileges: final report on Boris Johnson’s conduct — concluded that Johnson had deliberately misled the House and the Committee and had committed serious contempts.
Eton College: scholarships and awards — explains the school’s present scholarship and bursary arrangements. Current rules should not be assumed to establish the financial terms attached to Johnson’s historic King’s Scholarship.
The Guardian: Eton fees following the introduction of VAT — source for the approximate present-day annual cost of Eton used in the calculation.
Schools Week: closure of Ashdown House — reports the school’s boarding fees around the time it closed and confirms Johnson as a former pupil.
The Guardian: the history of university fees and grants — background to the publicly funded university system operating when Johnson attended Oxford.
The figure of roughly £370,000 is an illustrative present-day headline value, calculated from approximately two years at Ashdown House and five years at Eton before extras. It is not a claim that Johnson’s family paid that sum. Historic fees differed, and the precise remission attached to his King’s Scholarship is not publicly established. The point is the scale of educational provision surrounding his abilities, not a reconstruction of his family’s accounts.
Education and access to political power
The Sutton Trust: Parliamentary Privilege 2024 — source for the education of MPs elected in 2024: 23 per cent privately educated overall, including 15 per cent of Labour MPs and 46 per cent of Conservative MPs.
The Sutton Trust: Elitist Britain 2025 — source for the comparison with roughly 7 per cent of the population and for figures concerning Kemi Badenoch’s 2025 Shadow Cabinet, including private-school and Oxbridge attendance.
The Sutton Trust: analysis of Keir Starmer’s first Cabinet — supports the description of that Cabinet as unusually state-educated.
The Guardian: the educational background of Andy Burnham’s Cabinet — source for the figures that more than one-fifth were mainly privately educated and 54 per cent attended Oxford or Cambridge, compared with approximately 1 per cent of the population.
The Guardian: Reform UK’s frontbench team and Sky News: who is in Reform’s top team? — identify the senior figures whose publicly recorded educational histories are discussed in the article.
The Guardian: Nigel Farage’s schooldays at Dulwich College and Sky News: profile of Richard Tice — supporting profiles for two of the named examples.
Robert Jenrick’s former GOV.UK ministerial biography, his constituency association profile and PoliticsHome’s profile — support his attendance at Wolverhampton Grammar School and Cambridge. The PoliticsHome account also records that his school fees were paid from a family life-insurance payment, illustrating why school category alone cannot describe an entire childhood.
Suella Braverman’s former GOV.UK ministerial biography — supports her attendance at Heathfield School and Queens’ College, Cambridge. Published profiles report that she attended Heathfield on a partial scholarship.
The Guardian: profile of Zia Yusuf — records his attendance at Hampton School on a 50 per cent scholarship and subsequent study at the London School of Economics.
The Guardian: profile of Danny Kruger — records his education at Eton, Edinburgh and Oxford.
School type is used as evidence about routes and opportunities, not as a verdict on intelligence, character or fitness for office. “State-educated” also covers widely differing circumstances; a selective grammar school and an under-resourced comprehensive cannot automatically be treated as equivalent experiences.
Social class in universities and professional networks
Sociology: “Social Class, the Overlooked Element of Diversity within Higher Education” — research on the relative neglect of social class within higher-education diversity work and the difficulty of measuring academic staff backgrounds consistently.
The 93% Club: About us — explains the organisation’s work to build networks and opportunities for state-educated people.
The article does not claim that no university records any measure of social background. It says that the childhood circumstances and school histories of lecturers and professors are not recorded consistently enough to permit the same straightforward comparisons routinely made using race or gender data.
Media proportionality and Caroline Flack
The Guardian: scale of negative media coverage before Caroline Flack’s death — an analysis of the intensity and changing tone of coverage following her arrest.
The Guardian: Flack’s death turns the spotlight on tabloid conduct — contemporary discussion of media intrusion, online abuse and the retrospective response to her death.
The article explicitly states that the circumstances of the Flack and Arday cases were different. The comparison concerns only a recognisable public pattern: accusation, mass commentary, humiliation and retrospective expressions of regret.
Author’s experience and interpretation
The passages concerning the author’s state-school education, childhood on a Liverpool council estate, departure from school at 16 and personal experience of class prejudice are first-person testimony and therefore do not require an external source.
The article’s central conclusions—about meritocracy, collective judgement, proportionality and who is presumed to belong—are arguments drawn from the evidence above. References can establish the underlying events and figures; they cannot replace the reader’s judgement about what those facts mean.