Have we ever had a government more prepared to nakedly engage in full-on class warfare than the current one? Perhaps in the early days of the Labour movement, when punitive and spiteful taxation destroyed many of the great country estates in the UK, but in my lifetime nothing beats this lot. And their latest asinine suggestion, that civil service interns should be picked from the working class – rather than anyone who may actually be any good at the job, is just another example of the misguided and daft behaviour we have come to expect.
For starters, just what is working class? My father came from working-class origins, whereas my mother was firmly middle class, but my father’s family was wealthier than hers. The reason is because that while my grandfather worked in a factory, he was the foreman, which meant he had shares in the company.
My father, as a young man, was very left wing (however, this changed dramatically in later years) and full of firebrand rhetoric, which meant that my mother was extremely surprised on meeting my grandmother (over tea at The Savoy) to find her covered in fur and diamonds. Up the workers, etc.
Father made the leap from working class to middle class by virtue of his profession. He was a professor of pure maths, a role no one is going to get by virtue of who their parents were, be it nepo baby or son of the downtrodden worker hoiked upwards by Labour apparatchiks. And he got there via the grammar school system.
One of his cousins (who gave me away at my wedding) became a professor too. In fact most of my father’s close family, all from a humble background, did extremely well: academics, professionals, the lot of them.
Not one moved upwards via social engineering: they all did it because there was a decent education system providing opportunities for all of them.
If Labour really wanted to improve people, it would restore grammar schools. But that would be to acknowledge that not all people are created equally: some are cleverer than others, some are more ambitious and skilled.
Social engineering is never going to hack it: the only way to lift people up the ladder is to demand excellence in all fields.
The most able will achieve it. Let us hope that whichever party finally ousts the current lot recognises that truth.