James O'Brien faced hypocrisy claims after saying on LBC that it was a shame Prince George was going to Eton. The criticism followed Wednesday's broadcast and spread after listeners reacted on X to his own private-school background.
On Wednesday, O'Brien asked: "What was the first thing you thought when you heard that Prince George was going to Eton and why did you think it? Because I thought, oh that's a shame, and you are perfectly entitled to ask me why." He also said: "It's a shame for a future king to have spent his formative years in one of the most rarefied and privileged environments on the planet."
James O'Brien on LBC
He said he thought Prince George would be "completely detached" or would find it "much, much harder to understand the lives and concerns of ordinary people." O'Brien also added that going to a school like Eton does not mean someone can never understand ordinary people, which left his own view tied to the setting rather than a blanket rule about education.
That clash sat at the center of the backlash. O'Brien attended Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire, said he was "a beneficiary of" private education and "a user of it," and said his late father would "haunt" him if he did not put his own children in private schools.
Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire
He also said he gave his own children "the best possible education than they could ever have" and that he could recognize "the fundamental unfairness" of private schools. After the show aired, listeners on X called him a hypocrite, including posts that said, "Surely the biggest hypocrite on our airwaves!!" and "He's a hypocrite who should be removed off the air,".
The next point of interest is the same one the listeners raised: whether O'Brien's criticism of Prince George was aimed at private schooling itself or at the consequences he says follow from it. The story now rests on that contrast, because his own remarks placed his schooling and his children's schooling in the frame at the same time.
