GETTY The Labour Party is wrong in trying to stop the return of grammar schools

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Research by the Government shows convincingly that people from poor backgrounds perform better than those who attend comprehensive schools. The data also shows that grammar school pupils are three times more likely to attend a top, elite university like Oxford or Cambridge. These figures back up what I’ve been saying for the past six or seven years, and what Ukip stated in its manifesto for the 2015 general election – that we need to return to having grammars.

GETTY The Labour Party wants to keep the working class trapped in their position

I was delighted when Theresa May adopted that Ukip policy by making a commitment to more grammar schools during her maiden speech as Prime Minister. It all sounds very sensible and uncontroversial to me. But you’d think from the reaction of some in Westminster that Mrs May had announced we had decided to send ground troops to Syria. Unsurprisingly, it was Labour - the party that hates social mobility – that came out swinging the most. Labour’s beef is that they claim it breaks the 1998 Education Act which bans the setting up of new grammar schools. But to be frank, it’s a bad law passed in the bad Blair years and it should be ripped up anyway.

GETTY Shami Chakrabarti proves her hypocrisy by having all her children in selective education

Grammar schools were the greatest vehicle of social mobility that this country has ever seen. They allowed poor kids the opportunity to break out of their communities and achieve things they could only have dreamt about in the past, or indeed now. When we had grammar schools, we had more working class kids at Oxbridge than at any time before or since. As it stands, the top seven public schools send more students to those illustrious universities than the bottom two thousand state schools put together.

GETTY Labour's opposition to social mobility means the elite will stay where they are

And as a result of their closure we have a society which is dominated by the rich in a way that we haven’t seen since the turn of the last century. The judiciary, journalism, the City and politics are now disproportionately dominated by former public schools pupils. How can that possibly be fair? It always gets my back up when I hear someone who was privileged enough to go to public school telling people that selective schools are ‘elitist’. You hear it all the time – most loudly from the likes of Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, and their new Shadow Attorney General Shami Chakrabarti, who all had their children in selective education.

GETTY Mr Corbyn wants people to follow his words but ignore his actions

As usual from that lot, it’s a case of “do as I say, not as I do”. But there are only two reasons for opposing the creation of new grammar schools. One is that you want to keep working class people trapped so they continue to vote for your party. This is of course what the Labour Party wants and why they oppose grammars.

GETTY Labour's hypocrisy is shining right through their policies

It is I suspect one of the spiteful reasons they passed the stupid 1998 Act in the first place. The second is that you want maintain the status quo and make sure that the people who have always been at the top, stay at the top. That was why many in David Cameron’s Conservatives and the Establishment didn’t want to see a return to grammar schools. Stuff that. I want to see a society where clever working class kids have the same opportunities as those who are born into the middle class.

GETTY Children from all social and economic backgrounds should have the opportunity to achieve excellence