"In every single sphere of British influence, the upper echelons of power…are held overwhelmingly by the privately educated or the affluent middle class."

Which radical scion of the establishment could have said such a thing? Tony Benn? Dennis Skinner? Or even Leon Trotsky perhaps? The answer is former Conservative prime minister Sir John Major, that well known scourge of capitalism and tribune of the working class. When the man who privatised British Rail and launched propaganda campaigns against single mothers believes society is insufficiently meritocratic it ought to be clear that the UK is heading in the wrong direction.

And a closer look at the top of British society demonstrates that, rather than turning into a bleeding heart in his retirement years, Sir John is simply stating the obvious. Just 7 per cent of Britons are privately educated yet, according to a government report published in August, 33 per cent of MPs, 71 per cent of senior judges and 44 per cent of people on the Sunday Times Rich List went to fee-paying schools. If you were waiting for some sort of media outrage about such an appalling state of affairs then you may have to wait a little longer: 43 per cent of newspaper columnists and 26 per cent of BBC executives hail from the private school system too.

Even the grittier sections of the music industry, which once gave expression to working class authenticity, are increasingly dominated by the affluent. In 2011, music magazine The Word found that the majority of UK chart acts were either privately educated or from exclusive stage schools. This compared with 1990, when it found that nearly 80 per cent of artists in the Top 40 were educated in state schools.

Acting is hardly faring any better, with cut-glass accents and fatuous self-confidence increasingly ubiquitous. As the actress Julie Walters recently explained: "I look at almost all the up-and-coming names and they’re from the posh schools … Don’t get me wrong … they’re wonderful. It’s just a shame those working class kids aren’t coming through. When I started, 30 years ago, it was the complete opposite."

Elitism in Britain is now so pronounced that the coalition government’s own social mobility commission has compared it to "social engineering" in favour of the rich. (That’s right: social engineering – the term right-wing pundits lazily throw around whenever it is suggested that Oxford and Cambridge admit at least a few more pupils from ordinary - not poor, just ordinary - backgrounds.)

Speaking of which, Oxbridge graduates are snaffling a large number of the top jobs too. While they comprise just 1 per cent of the population, Oxford and Cambridge graduates make up 75 per cent of senior judges, 59 per cent of cabinet ministers, 47 per cent of newspaper columnists and 12 per cent of the Sunday Times Rich List.