What Prince Charles was really trying to say

AS A devout republican, I do not find myself rising often to the defence of Charles Windsor. Even were he a commoner, his taste in architecture and quack medicines put him beyond the pale. However, the heir to the throne has been badly traduced over his quite commonsense criticisms of the bogus social engineering that has been inflicted on our schools system - the comments of the English Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, not withstanding.

The prince’s tirade came in a gossipy palace memo, revealed at an employment tribunal in which one of his household staff, Elaine Day, is claiming unfair dismissal. Ms Day maintains the Royal household is "hierarchically elitist" - a new PC label I predict we will be hearing more of - stemming from the Prince of Wales’s belief that the staff should "know their place".

Perry Mason-style, Ms Day produced a hand-written note from Charles that seemed to prove her case: "What is wrong with everybody nowadays? What is it that makes everyone seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities?" He goes on to blame the "learning culture in schools" and a "child-centred system which admits no failure" and tells people they can achieve greatness "without ever putting in the necessary effort or having the natural abilities".

PC criticism of Charles’ private comments was instant and predictable. Charles Clarke popped up on morning radio to say the prince was "very old fashioned" and did not understand the modern education system: "We can’t all be born to be king, but we can aspire to do the best we possibly can". Mr Clarke was actually on radio to explain why he was ordering every English secondary to take a quota of disruptive hooligans expelled by other schools in their neighbourhood, as a cunning plan to level down English education. In another age, Mr Clarke would be in the Tower by now, but more for his daft policy on schools than his lesse majeste.

True, at face value, you can read into the prince’s unguarded words a justification for the Divine Right to rule, and for the serfs to stay in their allotted station in life. Yet this is the same Charlie Windsor who has bored the pants off us for decades with his well-meaning, if slightly batty, attempts to prove he is "one of us" and the people’s prince. Which suggests this is only another case of the man trying to say something most of us have already grasped, but putting it in words that allow the PC brigade to imply the opposite.

The telling phrase in the memo is "without ever putting in the necessary effort or having the natural abilities". This hits the nail on the head. Of course our society and our educational system should promote high aspiration and endeavour. Indeed, everybody should be given the chance to be a pop star, Education Secretary or (and here Prince Charles might really disagree) head of state.

But eventual success is always composed of 10 per cent aspiration and 90 per cent perspiration. The deserving winner is always the guy or gal who puts in the "necessary effort" to learn the appropriate skills or develop the strength of character to succeed - usually by failing miserably the first time round but not blaming that failure on the machinations of others. Even if some television show plucks you out of obscurity to be part of a boy band or girlie pop group, you are still destined to be only a one-hit wonder, or a footballer’s transient eye candy, unless you have both real talent and a passion to burn the midnight oil to hone that talent.

That message is precisely not what our education system is telling our young people. The PC conspiracy to abolish school league tables, from football scores to exam results, is all about pretending there are no winners or losers; that anyone can win just by asking. And that falsehood - which Charles Windsor was pointing out in his own inimitable, wonky style - is the cruel fantasy the modern PC elite are using to hoodwink our young folk.

And not just in sink comprehensives: even Oxbridge now hands out first-class honours degrees like sweeties to one in three students. Little wonder the business sector has lost faith in our education system being able to identify the best performers. Result: a generation of young people are frustrated by the fact that the high-blown qualifications they are awarded are not worth the parchment they are written on.

Consider this startling fact: in the quarter century since it became PC to abandon selection by academic merit in our schools and universities, the degree of social mobility in the UK has dropped markedly. Why? Because when Mr Clarke’s famous predecessor as Labour education minister, Tony Crosland, promised to close "every f***ing grammar school in the country", he kicked away the ladder for advancement for the aspirational working class. In its place was inserted a bogus equality of education and an equally bogus promise that everyone was now automatically assured of success in life.

As a republican, I hate rigid social hierarchy. As a democrat, I hate class barriers. As a free marketeer, I hate monopoly of any sort, be it economic, cultural or social. But I am not stupid enough to believe that human inequalities don’t exist or can be wished away. The folk who claim to believe that are generally closet elitists trying to protect their place atop the greasy pole by hoodwinking the lower orders so they don’t challenge the establishment.

My solution is to create ladders of opportunity for all, through a competitive education system and economy. Not everyone will have the wit, energy or patience to climb those ladders, but many will. In my meritocracy, everyone has the right to succeed, or to fail. But kick away such ladders, under the pretence no-one should ever fail, and all that happens is those on top of society stay on top, in perpetuity.

Charles Windsor is the only person in Britain automatically assured of the top job. The rest of us have to work for it. How paradoxical that it is Prince Charles who has to remind us of this simple truth.