 Also on the board are Tory MPs Virginia Bottomley and Richard Shepherd, as well as Lord Saatchi and Lady Howe.Commenting in 2001 on the rising status of the LSE, the British magazine "The Economist" stated that "two decades ago the LSE was still the poor relation of the University of London's other colleges.Now... it regularly follows Oxford and Cambridge in league tables of research output and teaching quality and is at least as well-known abroad as Oxbridge".