Whose schools are they anyway?

As so often, Norman Tebbit has a point. ‘Three of my grandchildren have gone to grammar schools, as I did,’ he told the Observer recently. ‘Now it looks as if we are going to cut off that route in the interest of something probably called social cohesion. But we’re not going to cut off the route to go through Eton. Come on, chaps. Fair’s fair!’

Lord Tebbit is the opposite of chippy, a Tory Titan who helped to make the politics of envy disreputable. His point is not that private schools are bad — far from it — but that pupils at state schools deserve much better than the often scandalously poor education they receive. He is entitled to ask what Tony Blair (Fettes) and David Cameron (Eton) propose to do about it — given that both party leaders so strenuously reject a return to the 11-plus.

The fate of the Schools Bill, which is expected to reach the Commons on 15 March, has become a test of Tony Blair’s authority.