Why we are fast losing our social mobility

12 April 2012

Politicians who used to lambast Labour's "social engineering" have been at it themselves this week over university access. Off came the gloves yesterday as universities minister David Willetts threatened penalties for colleges that don't lower A-level offers to pupils from poorer backgrounds. Nick Clegg has been scarcely less menacing. It's all, we are told, in the name of social mobility.

Yet many of the Government's measures are likely to achieve precisely the opposite. What's more, in allowing cuts to trump what should be a central goal, the Tories are throwing away a chance to take control of political ground on which Labour has always stood uneasily.

True, last year Gordon Brown appointed former health secretary Alan Milburn to lead an inquiry into social mobility. In August, Milburn made a seamless transition to become the Coalition's "social mobility czar". Back then, Clegg declared that "promoting social mobility is at the top of our social agenda". His own party sponsored an inquiry in 2009. Every politician loves us all striving to be middle-class.

Yet this is more naturally Tory territory. For all its genuflections, Labour has been less comfortable with social mobility. Fighting child poverty is natural for someone like Ed Miliband. But wanting workers to morph into the chardonnay-quaffing bourgeoisie - thereby perhaps whisking them from Labour heartlands to blue suburbs - hasn't come easily. Mobility stagnated under New Labour. The grip of the private schools on the professions tightened.

In fact, social mobility started to decline under Thatcher, despite her masterstroke of council house sales. Now the Tories should be coming up with ideas like that - in their appeal to most people's aspirations for their families, almost impossible for Labour to argue with.

Instead we've got university tuition fees that are guaranteed to deter working-class pupils. Promises of scholarships are but a sticking plaster on this wound, the threats as feeble as they are unfair.

At the other end of childhood, every study agrees that a key factor in breaking the link between parents' income and educational attainment is early help for poorer kids. That is the point of Sure Start. Ministers are slashing funding.

And on the axe falls, so kids' backgrounds become more, not less, crucial to where they can go in life. A small example: in my children's school, there's a clear class divide by age six in terms of who can swim - most of the middle-class kids can but most of their working-class mates can't. Will that get better as councils shut pools? And will poor kids read any earlier as libraries close?

It's wrong. What's more, nothing will re-toxify the Tory "brand" more, long term, than the spectacle of kids like those of privately educated Cabinet ministers doing even better next to the offspring of bricklayers, cleaners and cabbies.

Another fine mess over instant policy

Ministers' early proposals this week to give police powers to seize thugs' iPods suggest a lingering callowness. In June 2000 I was sitting in a meeting with Home Secretary Jack Straw (I was his civil service speechwriter) and Home Office ministers when a special adviser burst in: "Sorry Jack, I've got David Miliband [then head of Tony Blair's policy unit] on the phone and they really want to use the on-the-spot fines idea in a speech Tony's giving tomorrow."

"He really shouldn't - it's very unwise to go with that now," replied Straw. Blair gave his speech anyway, suggesting that police march thugs to cashpoints to exact £100 fines.

As we surveyed the wreckage from the speech and inevitable U-turn a few days later, one minister sighed: "We did warn them." Straw gave the merest hint of a smile: "Couldn't possibly comment."

Home Secretary Theresa May should learn from my old boss the wisdom of keeping your powder dry.

A very British taste to savour

To the Ritz, with my wine critic hat on, for a sumptuous lunch to unveil the latest vintage of GH Mumm's top champagne, Cuvée R Lalou 1999. The champagne was pretty extraordinary. But what generated most debate was the mystery ingredient in the miniature Poilâne croques monsieur served with an aged Beaufort fondue (for booze hacks, moments like this make the Lidl tastings worth it).

Executive chef John Williams, whose cooking I've long admired, invited us to guess the ingredient. He hinted in his gentle Geordie accent that it was "very British" but said even French staff had had to concede the edge of savoury brilliance it lent the soldiers of croque monsieur. The answer? Marmite. So nice to have a humble lifelong culinary taste endorsed at last by international haute cuisine.

Tweet at your peril, Russell

Russell Brand is reportedly in hot water with his wife, singer Katy Perry, having posted - and then hastily deleted - a photo of her without make-up on Twitter. It certainly wasn't a flattering snap: she looked like she'd just woken up. Brand's tweet may reflect male insensitivity to make-up angst. But it's more an example of the delusion still shared by so many Twitter users: that their tweets are somehow private, between friends. Like Brand's 1.85 million followers.

An important Press Complaints Commission ruling this week confirmed this seemingly obvious point: when tweeted, your life enjoys no legal right to privacy. I wouldn't dismiss out of hand the illusion Twitter gives you of a shared little community - in fact I enjoy that - but potentially, the whole world really is watching.

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