‘Your old man’s barking!’ I remember hissing indignantly at my then best friend Toby Young way back in the 1980s after his father, Michael, had spent the evening patiently explaining his famous 1958 essay, The Rise of the Meritocracy, over ‘supper’ at the somewhat grand family home in, of course, Islington. I’d obviously been thinking about something more pressing all those times we’d discussed the classic text in GCSE Sociology — probably about which order I’d ‘do’ Pan’s People in, should the opportunity arrive in suburban 1970s Bristol — but of course I’d presumed that ‘Lord’ Young (dead giveaway) would have favoured the rise of a meritocracy, being a man of humble origin himself.
Instead, I listened, dumb with horror (and focaccia), as he gently outlined the way in which a meritocracy would probably produce a cruel elite possessing none of the noblesse oblige of the nobs. Well, 30 years on, I still believe that what this country needs is a bit more meritocracy, not less; better a few more monsters of merit — preens — than the monstrous regiment of nepotistic nobs currently running the show. I wish I’d known that evening that the American rich give far more proportionally to charity than the English rich, because the Yanks are certainly more meritocratic but also appear to have a far greater propensity for altruism.
James Bloodworth is one of the best writers on politics around, and I was pleased to see that I turn up in a cameo — in typically combative mode — on page 50, putting the boot into SADs (the Sons and Daughters of the famous, who have effectively colonised the few jobs that working-class kids could historically escape through, from journalism to showbiz).
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