IN 1845, as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, Benjamin Disraeli, a young politician on the make, published a novel, “Sybil”, which lamented that Britain was dividing into “two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy”. Today, as the information revolution gathers pace, Britain suffers from the same problem. The country is more divided than it has been for decades, with the rich consolidating their power and people who are born in the wrong class or region seeing their chances of getting ahead declining. Theresa May rightly put dealing with this problem at the top of her agenda when she became prime minister. But on December 3rd all four members of Britain’s Social Mobility Commission resigned in protest at the lack of progress. This was one of the lowest points for a government that has no shortage of low points to choose from.

Social mobility is essential to the working of an advanced capitalist society. For one thing, citizens will accept the inequalities that capitalism generates only if they think they have a fair chance of getting ahead. The notion that the system is rigged can be just as destabilising as economic crises. Secondly, advanced economies can grow only if they make a reasonable job of discovering the hidden Einsteins who might be able to produce the next great invention if they were given the chance.

Britain is failing badly on both fronts. Its decision to leave the European Union was above all a revolt of the left-behind. The Social Mobility Commission discovered that 62 of the 65 parts of the country that it identified as “social-mobility cold spots”—that is, those with the worst education and employment prospects—voted to leave. A new paper by Raj Chetty, of Stanford University, and colleagues, argues that American growth is being hindered by the missing-Einstein problem because educational opportunity is increasingly restricted by class or region. That problem is as bad, if not worse, in Britain.

As social mobility has become more important it has become more difficult to promote. The reason for this is the paradox of meritocracy. In the first half of the 20th century, when the old establishment ruled the country, opening up opportunities was relatively simple. You forced the establishment to abandon obvious prejudices, such as the fact that the best Oxbridge colleges were reserved for men. You also forced it to build a ladder of opportunity for the poor: the 1944 Education Act raised the school-leaving age to 15, then 16, and the expansion of universities in the 1960s democratised higher education. Today opening up opportunities is much more difficult, precisely because the meritocratic revolution has been so successful.

The meritocratic elite has proved remarkably good at hoarding opportunities. Successful people tend to marry each other. Couples devote themselves to giving their children the best education possible, starting in the nursery. Private schools have also proved to be more successful than state schools at adapting to the meritocratic spirit. Institutions that once turned out flannelled fools and muddied oafs are now obsessed with exam results.

To make matters worse, the knowledge economy is a winner-takes-most economy. Superstar firms are pulling ahead of run-of-the-mill ones. Superstar cities are pulling ahead of second-tier ones. This problem is more pronounced in Britain than almost anywhere else because London is so dominant. The London effect is obviously good for London-based professionals who can provide their children with bed and board as they get their feet on the career ladder (often as unpaid interns). But it is also good for poorer people who are lucky enough to have subsidised accommodation within the sound of Bow Bells. London’s state schools are better than the national average, jobs are plentiful and you can get almost anywhere, at a squeeze, by public transport.

The result is a calcified society. Seventy-one per cent of senior judges, 62% of senior officers in the armed forces and 55% of civil service department heads attended private schools, which educate only 7% of the population. In Barnsley only 10% of disadvantaged young people make it to university, compared with 50% of similarly disadvantaged youngsters in Kensington and Chelsea. Only 6% of doctors, 12% of chief executives and 12% of journalists come from working-class backgrounds.

Going up

Reversing this calcification will take a lot of innovative thinking. The Social Mobility Commission produced a series of excellent reports which suggested sensible solutions such as better early education for disadvantaged children. This columnist would support a combination of reaching into Britain’s past and peering into its future. Britain has a distinguished history of elite institutions doing their bit for mobility: Oxbridge colleges creating feeder schools, and private schools setting aside places for poor scholars. Given that so many private schools have forgotten their social obligations in their zeal to fatten their coffers with fees from rich Russians and Chinese, it is time to remind them that they need to earn their charitable status. Meanwhile, the very technology that is widening class divisions can also be used to close them. The Israel Defence Forces respond to the lost-Einstein problem by monitoring children’s performance in video games, as well as more routine academic tests.

But Britain’s two main parties are failing to give this growing problem the energy it requires. The Conservatives are overwhelmed by Brexit. Labour is devoting its intellectual resources, in so far as it still has any, to the old problem of a closed establishment rather than the new problem of the marriage of meritocracy and plutocracy. Thanks to its commitment to intelligent reform, Disraeli’s Britain became the most peaceful, as well as the most successful, country in Europe. The political class may well be about to demonstrate that what intelligence and reform can do, stupidity and stasis can undo.