It started just a few years ago – back in the benighted 20th century, no one dreamed of auctioning off work experience. Now, a prevailing, comforting myth holds that internships are a "win-win" for employers and young people, saving money and setting up a "talent pipeline" for the former, bridging the gap between school and work and easing unemployment for the latter. But this wishful thinking, which has propelled internships into the mainstream and across the globe, conceals an uglier reality: internships are the face of privilege, restricting opportunities to those able to work for nothing or for a pittance – or sometimes even pay the price in cold hard cash.

Now we have fresh evidence, straight from the highest halls of power, that the world of internships is a morally bankrupt free-for-all, a new glass ceiling in the making: the Tories have been auctioning them off at a recent fundraiser, as reported in the Mail on Sunday and called out by Jackie Ashley on Comment is Free. The Mail reported that prestigious internship positions in a range of industries (finance, hedge-fund work, fashion, media and so on) recently raised more than £20,000 for the Conservatives at the exclusive Black and White party.

Needless to say, the purchasers were wealthy Tory donors looking out for their coddled offspring. Positions went for an average of £3,000 a pop. With most positions lasting only a week or two, it's obvious there won't be much real work or training taking place. On the other hand, these silver-spoon interns will have a name brand to burnish their CVs and may even have time for a handy bit of drive-by networking.

More or less discreetly, at fundraising events of all kinds, hundreds of internship auctions are now taking place – but the Tory auction apparently marked the first time major political figures had endorsed the practice. Like internships themselves, internship auctions are apparently an "innovation" from across the Atlantic. The US-based website CharityBuzz.com alone has sold well over 100 internships at American nonprofits, fashion houses, media outlets and so on – the most astonishing surely having been a one-week internship at Vogue with fashion doyenne Anna Wintour, which was snapped up in April 2010 for a cool $42,500. The money will reportedly benefit the Robert F Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights; it's better not to ask if the auctioning of job opportunities is a fitting tribute to the liberal icon. According to the CEO of CharityBuzz.com, half of the internship bidders are parents looking to snap up these experiences for their children.

Seriously? Is the auctioning of full-time jobs next? That would surely raise eyebrows as a foolish and unfair hiring practice, but somehow bidding on internships passes muster. Access to internships is often restricted enough as it is – to enrolled students (sometimes at particular schools), to those with connections, to those using internship placement firms (increasingly common in the US), to those who can afford to work for zero or no pay. Internship auctions, whatever good causes they may benefit, are a crowning absurdity, especially when endorsed by a government which only recently launched its Equality Strategy, pledging that every Whitehall department would "work to promote diversity, for example through internship schemes to widen access to the civil service for those who are currently under-represented, such as ethnic minorities and disabled people".

Nor should we take very seriously the criticism from Labour MP Tom Watson: "This is a crass example of rich Tories buying privilege ... It is obscene." Despite high youth unemployment and the pointed findings of the Milburn report – that the current internship system restricts access to the professions and reinforces inequality – the world of politics remains rotten with interns. Of the interns who work for MPs, less than 1% received the UK minimum wage, and nearly half were not even reimbursed for expenses, according to the general workers' union Unite. The New Statesman has estimated there are some 450 revolving interns connected to parliament, providing some 18,000 hours of free labour a week, saving MPs an estimated £5m a year. By US standards, this is all still child's play: some 20,000 interns descend on Washington DC each summer, approximately 6,000 of them working in Congress without pay.

The brisk trade in elite internships, and in the human futures that go with them, is just getting going. If the Black and White party is any indication, David Cameron and the Tories are not only unwilling to guarantee young people of all backgrounds access to the workforce – they're willing to sell it to the highest bidder.