Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

David Cameron is the leader battling inequality

The great paradox of British politics is that the left moan about inequality, but it’s the right who will remedy it. Ed Miliband is proposing the restoration of the old order, where the poor get the worst schools and the rich get the best (and the opportunities that flow from it). Labour plans to tax the rich more, and give money to the poor as if by way of compensation. The Tories want to revolutionise the system, so the poor have the same choice of schools that today only the rich can afford. Labour wants to make sure the unemployed are well looked-after. The Tories want to make sure the unemployed are rewarded — not penalised — if they seek work.

It may sound perverse. But it is David Cameron, an Old Etonian with a Brasenose first, who is the anti-establishment candidate and whose policies pose the greatest threat to the old, corrupt order. I look at this in my Telegraph column today.   Americans coming to Britain would be amazed at the grip our private schools have over the country. They educate 7 per cent of pupils, but figures from the Sutton Trust show that they provide the following proportions of our elites:

What explains this? Part of it will be what Samir Shah calls ‘cultural cloning’, how people have a bias towards recruiting in their own image. But we must also consider another staggering aspect of the British educational system: the attainment gap between private and public, which is bigger than any country bar Qatar, Brazil and Uruguay.

This should make you angry: after six decades of the welfare state, the British rich have a far better start in life than the poor. But you can hardly blame the private schools for being so good.

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