A “poshness test” is allegedly being applied by top British companies to exclude members of the lower orders from even getting a start in them. The claim comes from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, chaired by Alan Milburn, a former Labour minister. In a previous report by the same commission, Mr Milburn referred to Britain as a “closed shop society” and said “birth, not worth, has become more and more a determinant of people’s life chances”.
But while he and other politicians have argued that there are high barriers to success for outsiders in Britain, one can’t help noticing that, despite being a “closed shop”, well over 300,000 French people have come to work over here, many of them in jobs so well-paid that they are crowding out South Kensington. A similar or even greater deluge of Italians also suggests they find the barriers not so great as to preclude advancement here.
We have also recently learnt that Britain is the pre-eminent hub in Europe for technology start-ups, which again, suggests that upper-class toffs are not keeping everyone else down. And we have quite a few home-grown successes who have come from modest circumstances. Sir Terence Leahycame from a housing estate to be head of Tesco. Lord Sugar made a fortune despite starting on a stall in the East End. In recent times we have also had a grocers’ daughter for a prime minister as well as a working-class lad from Brixton