Social Mobility - A Reading from the Book of Clegg

Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, has today launched the government's 'Social Mobility Strategy'. I'll just let that idea sink in for a few moments.

The Con-Dem Deputy Prime Minister, whose government has abolished Educational Maintenance Allowances for 16-18 year olds and hiked University Tuition Fees to dizzying heights, still believes that this government has a role to play in increasing social mobility. Nick Clegg knows a thing or two about social mobility. If ever there was a story of rags to riches (courtesy of Wikipedia), then this is it...

Nicholas William Peter Clegg was born into a fairly typical Chalfont St Giles family in 1967. The family scraped by as best they could on their father's income, Nick Clegg Snr being the Chairman of United Trust Bank. He was educated at the prestigious Westminster School and enjoyed three years free education at Cambridge University (where he joined the Cambridge University Conservative Association). In retrospect, it was as much as any boy from an ordinary family could expect. Doubtless, his great-grandfather, Baron Arthur Von Engelhardt would have been proud of him.

So, there you have it. A man who knows all about fighting your way up from the very foot of the ladder. The BBC reported the launch today:

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg says he wants to stop people getting on in life purely because of "who they know". As he launches the government's social mobility strategy, Mr Clegg said no-one should get an unfair advantage because their parents have "met somebody at the tennis club or the golf club".

Mr Clegg told the BBC he wanted to "stop a lot of the informal advantages which are helping certain people to hoard opportunities at the exclusion of others. It's not just because of someone who's met somebody at the tennis club or the golf club, who's whispered something into someone's ear and they've got an internship for their son or daughter."

Here's an interesting fact. Nick Clegg, the son of the Chairman of a Bank, once managed to secure a cushy little summer job at the Postipankki Bank in Helsinki. Now, don't get me wrong. I am sure that any ordinary working class lad could have done the same thing. I am sure that Mr Clegg would recommend that sixth formers and students should get out there and enjoy similar life-enhancing experiences - perhaps like spending your gap year as a Skiing Instructor in Austria. Or they could enhance their educational experience with further study overseas, say, at the University of Minnesota and then at the College of Europe in Bruges. It's what ordinary everyday working class people do to enhance their social mobility - because these opportunities are cheap and easy to achieve without resorting to 'who you know'.

Nick Clegg has enjoyed a life of wealth and privilege. He has attended the best private schools which have been the springboard to Cambridge University - which, gallingly - he enjoyed for free. His government has just taken away the best chance many young people have for genuine social mobility - in the greatest attack of its kind in our history. They have turned the clock back at least fifty years, to a time when only the wealthy and the privileged stood any chance of climbing the social ladder. That he has the effrontery to launch a 'social mobility strategy'... well, I am just speechless. You really need to have a brass neck to thrust that level of hypocrisy into people's faces - the sort of effortless double speak that only a dedicated Thatcherite could pull off. I think that the last word should go to his friend and fellow conservative, David Cameron, with his own special message to those at the foot of british society...

Message from the Con-Dems - Get back in your boxes and shut up