Cameron fails the test

The most perceptive indictment of the Blair era was delivered, in an admirably candid speech last September, by Alan Milburn (interviewed by Fraser Nelson on page 14). Describing his own rise from a council estate to the ranks of the Cabinet, Mr Milburn asked, ‘Do we think that for a child growing up today in one of Britain’s poorest estates such mobility is possible or likely? Sadly, I think not.’

That observation should inspire the core mission statement of the next Conservative government. Asked about his gilded schooling at Eton and youthful indiscretions, David Cameron has stuck to the mantra that a person’s origins should be irrelevant: ‘What matters most of all is what you’re going to do.’ That is absolutely right: to adapt Disraeli, the modern Tory party is a party of aspiration, or it is nothing.

How depressing, then, that one of the first major policy announcements of Mr Cameron’s leadership should be to rule out, unequivocally, a drive towards selection in state schools. In a speech to the CBI on Wednesday, David Willetts, the shadow Education Secretary, said that a Conservative government would not ‘get rid of those grammar schools that remain’ — scarcely a ringing endorsement of the 164 such schools that survive in England — but that the party was now, definitively, ditching its support for academic selection.

John Major at least promised a grammar school ‘in every town’, even if he did not deliver such a policy. At the last election, Michael Howard — a proud product of Llanelli Grammar School — said that such schools would ‘survive and thrive’ if he became prime minister. It was encouraging that, as shadow Education Secretary, Mr Cameron himself said that all schools should have ‘the freedom to run their own admissions policy’.