Imagine that it’s 2020, Boris Johnson is gone, and you are the new British prime minister Jeremy Corbyn — or perhaps his more electable Labour successor. You are leading a coalition. Your mission is to make the UK fairer. British social mobility is “stagnant”, and a person’s background strongly predicts their future career, says the government’s Social Mobility Commission. The country’s elite passes down advantage from generation to generation: 64 per cent of Johnson’s cabinet went to private schools. All this unfairness helped prompt the vote for Brexit.
What reform would make Britain fairer? Nothing is off the table. Well, says a radical aide, w