Unthinkable? First-born among equals

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/05/unthinkable-first-born-among-equals

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Essex University researchers have discovered that first-born children tend to be more ambitious, better-qualified and more successful than their younger siblings. The lesson, according to the Financial Times this week, is that those involved in succession planning should therefore take care to give the top jobs to first-borns too, advice that the FT illustrated with a photo of Sir Richard Branson and his younger sisters. Nevertheless, the research seems a striking endorsement of the primogeniture succession that has sustained most kingship and inheritance systems, centuries before Essex University or social scientists were thought of. The findings could also cast light on why modern politicians struggle to be as successful as their predecessors supposedly were. David Cameron, for instance, is much criticised for failing to exert leadership within the fissiparous Conservative party. Yet he is also the latest in a succession of prime ministers who are younger siblings. The line now stretches back unbroken to Harold Wilson nearly 40 years ago. Perhaps the difficult truth is that Mr Cameron’s brother Alexander, a successful barrister, might have been the better man to lead the country. And perhaps Britain’s decline since the 1970s can be simply explained by the fact that Dorothy Callaghan, Muriel Roberts, Terry Major-Ball, Bill Blair and John Brown were all denied their chance too. If so, the prospect of prime minister Ed Miliband, also a younger brother, offers little respite.