Chris Trotter almost gets why socialism is wrong

In today's From the Left column, Chris Trotter says:

As I watched the cavalcade of secondary school pupils receive their prizes, and heard all around me the happy murmuring of proud parents, a lifetime's worth of hostility towards these sorts of ceremonies melted away.

All my life I have given thought only to those with no hope of receiving the glittering prizes. Even when (very occasionally) I received one myself, I could not help feeling that tug of guilt; that blush of embarrassment at being distinguished from my peers.

The socialist in me would rehearse all the reasons why I should reject such baubles. What chance does a kid from a working-class family have in a competition for academic distinction? Where are the shelves of books? The family connections? The universally positive middleclass expectations in which these high-achievers are cradled from the day they are born?

How can a kid raised among the stark, bare walls of a state house hope to compete with a kid who has grown up with Beethoven and Bach, Rembrandt and Brueghel?

But as I watched the prizewinners make their way across the stage, it suddenly hit me that this attitude was both extraordinarily arrogant, and very, very dangerous.

Of course he then starts wondering why those in state houses turned against Labour. I'm not sure which way he's going with this.

Maybe we need to pray for him.

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