John Major 'shocked' at privately educated elite's hold on power

Former PM blames 'collapse in social mobility' on Labour and says government should do more to help pensioners.

Patrick Wintour

Sir John Major has expressed his shock at the way in which every sphere of modern public life is dominated by a private school-educated elite and well-heeled middle class. He also suggested interest rates should go back to "normal levels of 3% to 5 %" as one way of helping pensioners deal with the recent squeeze on earnings.

The former prime minister has been warning for months about the threat of so-called net curtain poverty, and claimed the government needed to do more to address the quiet poverty gripping the responsible middle class. He blamed the slowdown in social mobility on Labour policies, including the abolition of grammar schools.

In a speech in Norfolk on Friday, reported on Monday by the Daily Telegraph, he claimed that pensioners' savings were being squeezed by a mix of inflation and low interest rates.

Major – who went to a grammar school in south London and left with three O-levels – said: "In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power in 2013 are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class. To me from my background, I find that truly shocking."

He blamed this "collapse in social mobility" on Labour, claiming that despite Ed Miliband's "absurd mantra to be the one-nation party, they left a Victorian divide between stagnation and aspiration".

Major said: "I remember enough of my past to be outraged on behalf of the people abandoned when social mobility is lost

"Our education system should help children out of the circumstances in which they were born, not lock them into the circumstances in which they were born. "We need them to fly as high as their luck, their ability and their sheer hard graft can actually take them. And it isn't going to happen magically."

The Commission on Child Poverty and Social Mobility, chaired by Alan Milburn, the former Labour cabinet minister, has found no evidence that social mobility slowed due to Labour policies.

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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/11/john-major-shocked-elite-social-mobility