Grammatical error

Janet Daley is spot on in today’s Telegraph: the grammar schools row was a coronation gift to Gordon Brown. What were the Tories thinking of? According to the always excellent John Rentoul in the Independent on Sunday, this was – by accident or design – Cameron’s Clause Four moment when he shed an old party doctrine and (more importantly) stood his ground when the Right went beserk. This gets to the heart of the matter: is academic selection actually an old party doctrine, as the nationalisation of industry was for Labour? It seems to me, living in Hackney, that social mobility through education is an idea whose time has come: it ought to be the very essence of modernity, the principle that injects dynamism and hope to a society that is prosperous. Selective state education means that the brightest children on council estates have a path to the top as well as the kids on their way to prep school this morning.