Excellent piece by Nick Cohen, who points out the utter stupidity of the Left's determination to destroy selection in the 1960s and 1970s.

As he puts it:

The second half of the twentieth century saw a revolution in the private sector which turned independent schools from nurseries of Empire into centres of academic excellence. Their cause was helped immeasurably by the Labour Party which began the destruction of the competition. In the 1960s, when most dons really were establishment types, two thirds of children going to Oxbridge came from state schools. The grammar schools were abolished, and the direct grant schools went private and by the 1990s the proportion of state school pupils at Oxbridge stood at 50 per cent.

The fall is just one sign among many that social mobility in supposedly classless and anti-elitist Britain is grinding to a halt. However tough the entrance exams and however many scholarships they offer, the academic achievements of the best public schools can't disguise the fact that many brilliant pupils can't think of applying because their parents can't afford the fees. As a result, Britain has become a strange island. No other country in Europe would sit back while its private schools raced ahead. They would find a way to make sure their best schools were open to all talented children.

George Walden, the former Tory education minister, asks Labour supporters who think the abolition of the grammar schools was an egalitarian triumph a good question: why do you think the Conservative Party never reintroduced selection? In its 18 years in power it pressed ahead with previously unthinkable policies. It allowed unemployment to rise to 3,000,000, privatised swathes of the economy, cut the taxes of the rich and crippled the unions. It attacked every part of the post-war social democratic settlement but never reversed the abolition of grammar schools because it suited the wealthy to a tee.

...Put bluntly, if the wealthy were to devise a system which perpetuated inequality, the system they would come up with would be a fair copy of the British education system which talks the language of anti-elitism while ensuring that the children of the elite prosper.

At the risk of dreadful self-publicity (risk is the wrong word; certainty, more like it) you can read a more detailed exposition of this argument in my book, A Class Act - if you can get hold of it, that is.