Rachel Sylvester’s Times column today is fascinating. Not for her views on the inner wranglings at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, so much as for her articulation of a clear dividing line between Left and Right. Here’s the key section:
“The truth is that senior Labour figures disagree fundamentally about the role of the State in promoting fairness, the basic mission of any centre-left party.
“You see it in schools policy, where there is tension between those who want to encourage excellence and those who prefer to combat elitism. It applies to welfare, with questions about whether the benefits system should redistribute wealth or act as a safety net. There are implications in the debate about how much the Government should intervene on City bonuses. Even internships exemplify the divide: one week they are a middle-class ploy, the next they are exploitation of the young.”
This continues the theme of Michael Gove’s interview in the Telegraph yesterday, where he underlined Conservative aims to raise the quality of education for all, rather than just for a few. I remember during the leadership campaign in 2005 having a discussion with a very nice man on the phone about what he saw as David Cameron’s failure to pledge to reverse tuition fees. We eventually came to the conclusion that you could have fully state-funded university access for a very limited number of students; or if you charged fees (obviously with access to grants, scholarships and so on), you opened up access to everyone who wanted to go to university and could take the academic pace.
This is exactly the argument that we should be making in every area. It’s not good enough for any government to abandon vast numbers to failure (see today’s SATs results for further evidence of Labour’s failings). But nor is it good enough for any government to simply level down in the hope that results will look better.
Levelling up, not down, is how to help people live better lives.
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Indeed it is. Chris Dillow has a nice piece making the point that inequality dropped most when there was least interference from the State – during the 1920s and 30s. And at that time education was prized, valued and rewarded.