Prezza prejudice

IF proof were ever needed that the Labour leopard – despite eight years of Tony Blair – hasn’t really changed its spots, analyse remarks this weekend by John Prescott.

According to this ex- shop steward, the Tories represent class war and Mr Blair’s new Education Bill must be destroyed because it will effectively mean the return of the 11-plus which Mr Prescott hates.

Britain class-ridden? Where has Two Jags been for the last 25 years? A woman he despises, a grammar school girl from a corner shop in Grantham, did more to dismantle this country’s class divisions than any Labour government by lifting the aspirations of millions through the sale of council houses.

In the process she shattered Labour’s exploitation of its housing estate power base and created a social revolution which saw an expansion of the middle classes. Her deregulation of the once-rarified City of London enabled talent from all walks of life to make fortunes in the Square Mile. By smashing the unions and state industrial dinosaurs, she turned Britain into a truly entrepreneurial society.

This explosion in social mobility appears to have passed Mr Prescott by. His classwar rant will appear incomprehensible to most young people who see a world where the sky’s the limit if they have the ability.

His opposition to educational reform will be seen as a betrayal of bright children stuck in sink schools, which leads to fewer working class sons and daughters going to university today than in Mr Prescott’s teenage years. But the die-hards in his party will be pleased (and so, we predict, will Mr Cameron’s Tories).