Government is a very clumsy institution, and therefore it loves attacking symptoms rather than causes. Mr Clegg’s new document, called Opening Doors: Breaking Barriers, A Strategy for Social Mobility, says: “Access to the most selective universities is too restricted to those from the most privileged backgrounds”. The evidence offered for this statement is that a far higher proportion of pupils from such backgrounds attends such universities than exists in the general population. The Government “therefore” places “obligations on universities to improve access”.  But why does this “disproportion” prove what the Government claims? Wouldn’t you expect that the best schools would get more people into the best universities than would the worst or middling schools? Mightn’t you notice that the once-excellent schools in the state system, mainly grammar schools, have been abolished or relentlessly attacked over the past 50 years? Mightn’t this have something to do with the problem? Mightn’t able pupils be failing to come to Oxbridge from bad schools because those schools discourage them, and because, able though they are, they are so poorly taught that it is already, at the age of 18, too late to make up for the 13 or so years that their education has wasted?  In short, by noticing a lack of social mobility and then attacking the few schools that still maintain really high educational standards, mightn’t the Government be doing yet more harm to an already dysfunctional system?  The same applies, on a more comic and minor level, to the whole question of internships. Mr Clegg thinks it very shocking that employers use unpaid interns, because this favours those who have money already. So his answer is that, from now on, internships should all be “name-blind”, “school-blind” and all be paid. If this were to happen, though, almost all such posts not funded by the taxpayer or by huge companies would cease. Yes, yes, interns are usually lovely, lovely people, but we must not deceive our dear young children about who is really the buyer and who the seller in this market. The compulsory payment of interns is an almost perfect example of the best being the enemy of the good.  In fact, well-meaning Mr Clegg is not at all a hypocrite for having himself been an intern at a Finnish bank because of his father’s skilful use of the hyvä veli-verkosto (that’s Finnish for old boy network, by the way). He is just being silly to waste his energy trying to get rid of such things. He says he wants a society “in which success is based on what you know, not who [by which, I say – in repulsive, elitist, Oxbridge manner – he means “whom”] you know”. Such a society has never existed and never will. It is not even a worthwhile aspiration.  The truth is that, since society is composed of human beings, both what and whom you know will always be important. If you attack customs based on whom you know, you do not just make life difficult for the Bullingdon Club, but for all families, small businesses, neighbourly relationships, school friendships, members of clubs, of churches and mosques. Has anyone in his or her life ever been so lonely and sad and principled and priggish that he has never accepted advancement or help from a friend or relation? Social mobility is not, cannot be the opposite of social stability. The one should be the likely consequence of the other, and social stability is deeply bound up with whom you know.  Indeed, you could argue that the problem for the lower end of the social scale today is that the old “whom you know” arrangements have collapsed. Friendly societies, trade unions, Boys’ Brigades, apprenticeships, marriages, extended families, political parties, amateur football clubs are all much weaker than they were. These or equivalent institutions remain much stronger in the upper middle classes. Don’t attack them. Look for ways of replicating, modernising or developing them among poorer people.  Above all, stop seeing poorer people as victims for whom all these things must be done, rather than people who could do much more if only they were allowed to. In this respect, Mr Clegg has actually achieved a great victory in the Coalition, which I am surprised he does not trumpet more. He has insisted that tax cuts be concentrated on the lowest paid, the eventual aim being to stop people paying income tax until they earn £10,000 a year. There should be many more such ideas where that came from, such as abolishing requirements that restrict so many public service jobs to graduates, abolishing the minimum wage for everyone under the age of, say, 21, cutting fuel duty, and doing away with planning restrictions that make cheap housing impossible.  I come back to the example of the driving test. The fact is that, although it is pretty expensive to have lessons, there is no great social problem of people who would like to learn to drive not being able to do so. The reason for this is that uneducated people can see the point. They realise that driving opens up opportunities, freedoms and pleasures, so they take the trouble to find the money to pass without the help of any government programme at all. And because the standards required to pass are objective and the same for everyone, rather than all muddled up with Cleggy agonies about being posh, or chippy Left-wing resentments against elitism, they succeed on their merits.
By attacking excellent schools, the Coalition is making a dysfunctional system    even worse, writes Charles Moore.