Simon asks a good question: "why is there this presumption that we should be governed by a meritocratic elite?"

There are good reasons why we shouldn't be. One, as Simon says, is that in a representative democracy, politicians should represent the people*. This isn't merely an intrinsic good. Because we tend to trust people like ourselves, a more representative body of MPs might well increase trust in politics.

What's more, in one important respect, the "elite" aren't very good at politics. Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership in large part because his Oxbridge-educated opponents were lousy at campaigning; being good at "insider politics" - for example winning influential mentors - doesn't make you good at appealing to "ordinary" people. As I've said, perseverance and soft skills matter at least as much as intellectual ability**.

Against these arguments stand the classic Burkean one - that MPs should not be representative of their constituents but should instead exercise independent judgement on their behalf.

We might elaborate on this by remembering something Thomas Sowell said:

One of the best things about going to Harvard is that, for the rest of your life, you are neither intimidated nor impressed by people who went to Harvard.

The intellectual (over-)confidence one gets from an "elite" university should help ministers to stand up against what Blair once called the "forces of conservatism": lobbyists, civil servants and other vested interests.

This argument for elite rule, though, doesn't apply now. For one thing, as Simon says, MPs can hire in people of good judgement, and even delegate policy-making to them - as it does with the Bank of England. And for another, Oxbridge rule has not generated good judgement. In several areas - such as immigration and fiscal policy - policy owes more to the prejudices of the mob than to enlightened judgement. And thirdly, politicians have not stood up against the strongest vested interests, such as those of financial capital: quite the opposite.

Which brings me to a depressing thought. Could it be that our present system gives us the worst of both "elite" rule and genuine representation? On the one hand, we get the lousy policies that mob rule would produce. But on the other hand, we also get the rent-seeking, distrust and narrowness of discourse that result from "eilte" domination.

* We should call this the Bill Stone theory. Simon Hoggart used to tell this story:

[Mr Stone] used to sit in the corner of the Strangers' Bar drinking pints of Federation ale to dull the pain of his pneumoconiosis. He was eavesdropping on a conversation at the bar, where someone said exasperatedly about the Commons: "The trouble with this place is, it's full of cunts!"
Bill put down his pint, wiped the foam from his lip and said: "They's plenty of cunts in country, and they deserve some representation."

** You might be tempted to add another argument in favour of representation and against elite rule - that it breeds a tendency to groupthink. I'm not sure about this. The most-criticized course - Oxford's PPE - isn't to blame here. As Nick says, "there wasn't then, and is not now, anything resembling an Oxford ideology". A course which has produced Nick Cohen, Ann Widdecombe, Seumas Milne and David Cameron might have its faults, but the production of groupthink isn't one of them. The narrowness of political debate has other causes.