Toby Young

On the face of it, there’s something quite appealing about driverless cars. It will be like having a chauffeur-driven chariot at your beck and call, except it will be no more expensive than owning a car. Indeed, it might well be-cheaper because you’ll be less likely to have an accident, so insurance premiums will be lower, and it will use fuel more efficiently. Not only that, but we’re told journey times will be shorter because driverless cars don’t need to keep more than a few inches apart, thereby reducing congestion. And they’ll be quicker still if the inner-cities are reserved for driverless cars only. No need for traffic lights, roundabouts or three-way junctions — just a seamless flow of traffic. Needless to say, I’m not convinced.

I’ve been thinking about poor Shami Chakrabarti and the drubbing she’s suffered since it was revealed she’s sending her son to Dulwich College. She joins a long line of Labour hypocrites who are opposed to grammar schools but choose to send their own children to selective schools. The list includes Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Tony Crosland, Polly Toynbee, Diane Abbott, Harriet Harman and Seumus Milne. My issue with these Labour grandees is not so much the double standards, although that does stick in the craw, obviously, but the stupidity. Why risk their political credibility and, for those that go private, beggar themselves, when there’s little reason to suppose that their children will do better at selective schools than they will at good comprehensives?

I’m writing this from the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham where the mood is buoyant, to put it mildly. Everyone seems delighted with the new captain and completely unfazed by the perilous waters ahead. If anyone is sad about the demise of David Cameron and some of his key lieutenants they’re not letting on. It’s a case of Le roi est mort, vive le roi! In my spare time I’ve been reading Craig Oliver’s referendum diary, Unleashing Demons, and reflecting on the events that led to Cameron’s demise. As a Remainer, Oliver is in no doubt about why his side lost: the mendacity of the Leave campaign. His lot were honourable men, constrained by the facts and their human-decency, while the other lot were despicable liars for whom no blow was too low.

I appeared on Radio 4 with Shirley Williams recently and as we were leaving I asked her if she thought Labour might split if Jeremy Corbyn were re-elected. Would the history of the SDP, which she helped set up in 1981, put off Labour moderates from trying something similar? She thought it might, but suggested an alternative, which was a ‘non-aggression pact’ between all the left-of-centre parties. ‘We can unite around the issues we agree on and get the Tories out,’ she said.

Forgive me if I don’t get too worked up about Momentum Kids. For those who haven’t been following Labour’s internal politics too closely, Momentum is a Trotskyist faction within the party that was instrumental in getting Jeremy Corbyn elected last year and, barring an upset, re-elected this weekend. Momentum claims the main purpose of its new kiddie wing, will cater to three-year-olds and upwards, is to offer childcare facilities to women so they can get more involved in campaigning. But it also acknowledges that Momentum Kids will play an ‘educational’ role. ‘Let’s create a space for questioning, curious children where we can listen to them and give them a voice,’ says one of the group’s founders.

'It is highly unlikely the Prime Minister has read the book,’ my father harrumphed, commenting on the appropriation of the word ‘meritocracy’, which he invented to describe a dystopian society of the future in The Rise of the Meritocracy. That comment appeared in a 2001 article for the Guardian and the Prime Minister in question was Tony Blair, but I expect my late father would have been equally unhappy about Theresa May’s misuse of it in her education speech last week. In fact, he probably would have been even more cross because the book, which was published in 1958, was a thinly veiled attack on grammar schools.

What’s wrong with you?’ That was the question an American broadcaster asked Anthony Weiner when his New York City mayoral campaign went up in flames in 2013. Weiner, the subject of a feature-length documentary released earlier this year, had just become embroiled in a second sex scandal, the first having derailed his political career in 2011. The extraordinary thing about the second scandal is that his efforts to rehabilitate himself as a public figure, helped by his wife’s decision to stand by him, seemed to be working. He was topping the polls when the scandal broke, which demands the question: ‘Why risk it all again?’ You’d think his experience would have taught him a lesson, but apparently not.

E .D. Hirsch Jr., the American educationalist and author of Cultural Literacy, has a new book out that may throw some light on why France has such a problem integrating its Muslim population. Called Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories, it’s a comprehensive attack on the progressive approach that has done so much harm to schools in the West. Hirsch identifies three ideas in particular: that education should be ‘developmentally appropriate’, with the emphasis on learning through discovery; that it should be ‘child-centred’, taking account of different ‘learning styles’; and that the overarching aim of education should be the cultivation of ‘critical thinking’ skills.

The BBC has published a list of the 100 best films of the 21st century, compiled after consulting academics, cinema curators and critics — and, as you’d expect, it’s almost comically dull. The list contains numerous turgid meditations on the spiritual void at the heart of western civilisation by obscure European ‘auteurs’ and not a single Hollywood comedy. It’s as if the respondents mistook the word ‘best’ for ‘boring’. To give you an idea of just how absurd the list is, it doesn’t include any of the billion-dollar blockbusters from Marvel Studios — no, not even Guardians of the Galaxy — but does have two movies by the impenetrable Danish director Lars von Trier.

After the misery of going abroad for the summer holidays for the past few years, I’m now happily back in Cornwall. Caroline took some persuading. We used to come every year, but the combination of bad weather and cramped accommodation became too much for her. After a bad experience in a mobile home three years ago, she vowed ‘never again’ and we spent a week in Portugal in 2014 and then ten days in France last year. That was purgatory. The last straw was being un-able to order fresh fish at a seaside restaurant in the Languedoc. To get Caroline to reconsider, I had to splash out on a luxurious ‘chalet’ overlooking Gwithian Beach near St Ives.

By rights, I should be one of those Tories who is passionately in favour of grammar schools. After all, I went to one myself. My attachment to them should be particularly strong because before arriving at William Ellis in Highgate I went to two bog-standard comprehensives and failed all my O--levels apart from English Literature, in which I got a C. The only other qualification I left with was a grade one CSE in Drama. William Ellis was the making of me. Had I not got in, I doubt I would have ended up at Oxford. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not a passionate opponent of grammar schools either.

The dog days of July probably aren’t the best time to launch a new political movement, but then the people who campaigned for Remain in the EU referendum aren’t known for their media savvy. Consequently, Paddy Ashdown made a surprise appearance on Marr last Sunday to announce the creation of More United, a ‘tech-driven political start-up’ that takes its name from a phrase the late Jo Cox MP used in her maiden speech: ‘We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.’ More United’s website doesn’t explicitly say that the organisation’s raison d’être is to overturn the result of the referendum. Rather, this is hidden away in a section called ‘Example policies’.

Could grammar schools be about to make a comeback? That Theresa May went to one, and that the number of grammar-school-educated members of the cabinet has increased from three to eight since she took over, has fuelled speculation about a shift in education policy. There are various forms this could take. The least politically difficult would be for Justine Greening, the new Education Secretary, to let England’s 164 grammar schools expand. Her predecessor, Nicky Morgan, approved an application by a selective girls’ school in Tonbridge to set up an annexe in Sevenoaks; it’s due to open next year. Greening could approve several more.

The departure of Andrea Leadsom from the Conservative leadership race was a blow to pundits who claim we’re living in an age of ‘post-truth politics’. According to Michael Deacon, the Telegraph’s political sketchwriter, she was an ideal candidate because she embodied the ‘anti-factual’ mood of the country. ‘Facts are negative,’ he wrote, parodying the attitude of Leadsom’s knuckle--dragging supporters. ‘Facts are pessimistic. Facts are unpatriotic.

Brits don’t quit,’ said David Cameron two weeks ago, to which the obvious rejoinder is: ‘Oh but they do!’ The list of quitters since the referendum seems to grow every day, the latest being Nigel -Farage. Everyone made the same joke when they heard he had resigned — ‘How long for?’ — but when I bumped into Suzanne Evans earlier this week she told me he was still in charge. ‘I think he was giving notice of his intention to resign, but hasn’t put a date on it,’ she said. She was paying close attention, given that she became the interim leader the last time Nigel quit and lasted precisely three days. I hope it’s permanent this time, if only to disprove Enoch Powell’s famous maxim.