Way of the World Michael Deacon

The results of the census may suggest that religious faith is in decline. But that’s only because of an omission on the form. Somehow, the Office for National Statistics forgot to include Britain’s leading religion. The NHS.

It’s now 30 years since Nigel Lawson described the health service as “the closest thing the English have to a religion”. But it’s truer today than ever. This country worships the NHS. Even when it’s in a horrendous mess, like at present, we never blame the NHS itself. We blame the government of the day for not giving the NHS enough money. Last year’s NHS budget, after all, was a mere £176.5billion.

At any rate, there’s no denying that, in the years since Lord Lawson’s comment, our veneration has intensified. The most obvious proof came during the first Covid lockdown, when, every Thursday at eight o’clock, we all stood on our doorsteps and reverentially applauded. We weren’t just showing our appreciation for nurses’ bravery and hard work. We were affirming our faith in the NHS as a whole. It was a secular form of thanksgiving. A weekly service, which the entire country dutifully attended.

All MPS know that the NHS – or “our NHS”, as they take care to call it – is sacred. Were any party to dare suggest privatisation, it would be routed at the ballot box.

This may well be why, during the general election campaign of 2019, Jeremy Corbyn kept telling voters that the Tories were secretly planning to sell the NHS to Donald Trump. Admittedly, it sounded rather an odd plan, given the strong likelihood that Trump would be voted out of office the following year – as, indeed, he was. It was also unclear why Trump would want to buy the NHS, given that his principal business interests lie in hotels, rather than hospitals. Even an entrepreneur of his undoubted gifts might struggle to turn an A&E in Scunthorpe into a six-star resort with casino and golf course.

Still, Mr Corbyn was adamant that the Tories were on the brink of selling the NHS to Trump, and a man of his unimpeachable integrity couldn’t possibly have made up such a serious claim. I wonder what’s delaying the sale. Trump does drive a hard bargain, so perhaps he’s still haggling to get the price down.

If Labour’s plan to tax fees ends up driving private schools out of business, the Left will be delighted. In their view, it’s indefensible that some children receive a better education than others, just because their parents have more money.

I fear, however, that they haven’t thought this through. Because, if the Left really want to achieve a level playing field in education, destroying private schools simply won’t be enough.

For one thing, better-off parents will still be able to pay for their children to receive private tutoring. That’s an unfair advantage. So Labour will have to ban private tutors, too.

Second, Labour will need to stop better-off parents buying houses in the catchment areas of the best state schools, as this prices out the poor. Short of banning people from buying houses altogether, there is only one solution. Labour must ensure that no school is better than any other. If a school achieves above-average exam results, its staff must be disciplined, and ordered to bring results down. Ofsted inspectors will be sent to check that standards are being sufficiently lowered. Any school rated Outstanding will be placed in special measures.

The fight to eradicate educational inequality cannot end there, however. Studies show that children who grow up in a house full of books do far better academically than children who don’t. Clearly this is unfair, because some parents can afford to buy their children lots of books, while others can’t. So buying books should be banned, too.

Above all, Labour must tackle one of the greatest sources of educational inequality: genetics. Intelligence is to some degree heritable. So being born to intelligent parents gives a child an unfair advantage, just like being born to rich parents.

There is only one way to remove this advantage. Sir Keir Starmer must decree that, under Labour, every child in Britain will be born to the same biological parents. Ministers will select a single married couple, and task them with repopulating the country, year after year. All other couples will be banned from procreation.

To maintain Britain’s birth rate, the appointed couple will need to have around 700,000 babies a year. It may seem a tall order, but socialist governments have never shied away from ambitious production targets.

Last month it was decided that, from next year, the student union at Oxford will no longer have a women’s officer. Instead, it will have something called a “liberation and equalities representative”. A female union official, Ellie Greaves, expressed concern at the decision, and said she would “continue to prioritise women”.

For this heinous crime against woke orthodoxy, she has now issued an abject public apology. Her comments, she says, reflected “a bio-essentialist, narrow-minded narrative of what being a woman is … I cannot apologise enough for the damage and hurt I have caused the trans community … I will endeavour to educate myself …”

What a remarkable conversion. It’s like a 21st-century update of Nineteen Eighty-four.

“Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of her nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. She had won the victory over herself. She loved Big Sister.”