[Roy] Jenkins is far too honest a critic to let either university - especially his own - get away completely free of stricture. Thus, in reporting that Balliol and All Souls ran the empire virtually unaided, he adds, devastatingly: "It is a little difficult not to comment that the main direction in which they ran it is into the ground." He confesses, too that Oxford, "though a crucial guardian" of "humanistic learning", is at its worst, "glib and flippant" - a university based on talking, rather than listening, "which has kept Britain well supplied with those good at the chattering occupations, such as defending the criminal classes, conducting television panels, and governing the country."
Walter Ellis, The Oxbridge Conspiracy.