David Johnston

David Johnston was chief executive of the Social Mobility Foundation for ten years and entered parliament as MP for Wantage last year. He tweets @david4wantage.

The social mobility case against grammar schools

Plenty of Conservative party members won’t like this article. I apologise in advance for that: I know grammar schools are popular with the membership and my view won’t be. But bringing them back would be a serious misstep for education policy. They are a distraction from what we should be doing, they serve the wealthy

David Amess showed why people should go into politics

I often joke that when I became an MP in 2019, after being a charity chief executive, I went from saint to sinner in the mind of the public. When you work for a charity, people assume you’re one of the good guys: honest, principled, in it for the right reasons. Too often politicians are

The trouble with Erasmus is not just the cost

It was curious to see the explosion of outrage over the UK no longer participating in the Erasmus scheme. We were told it broadened young people’s horizons by sending British undergraduates to study at a European university. We were told our young people are being deprived of this opportunity. But having spent my pre-politics career