Earlier this year, Dominic Cummings appealed for "more genuine cognitive diversity" in government, wanting to hire "true wild cards" and weirdos. The A level results which have seen talented students punished for being poor shows that he has not yet achieved that ambition.

I say this because there was in principle an obvious solution. The government should have adopted a version of the Texas 10 per cent rule, which requires that the top 10 per cent of students from each school be admitted to Texan state universities. Adapting this to the English case would have meant asking schools to give A* grades to the best 8.9% of students in each subject, A grades to the next 18.7% and so on (I've used these numbers to match this year's distribution of grades.)

Such a system would have had six great advantages. It would have avoided the problem of trying to compare students across schools in the absence of public exams. It would have been more transparent than this year's effort at standardization. It would have prevented grade inflation, as the proportion of grades could have been determined in advance. It has a proven track record: it has worked well enough in Texas for years. It would have ensured that grades were determined by those who most knew what they were doing. As Ofqual itself says (pdf):

The best judges of the relative ability of students in a school or college were the teachers who had been preparing these students... we know from research evidence that people are better at making relative judgements than absolute judgements and that teachers' judgements tend to be more accurate when they are ranking students rather than estimating their future attainment.

And it would have embodied a principle of equality of opportunity, as it would reward students for their own efforts and abilities and not have punished them for going to poor-performing schools. Although John Roemer best articulated this principle, it is also a Thatcherite one: she wanted "a land in which individuals will have a fair chance, by their own efforts, of winning happiness". The Texas rule fulfils this aim better than an algorithm which punishes people for their background.

Sure, there would have been a few issues: how to treat borderline cases, or schools where very few students sat some subjects. But these issues are surely minor compared to those afflicting the current system.

Which poses the question: why was this method not even discussed (at least in public)?

Ignorance is no excuse: I was writing about the Texas rule 16 years ago, and anybody who knows less than me is utterly unqualified for any position of authority.

Instead, it's because it challenges the class system in two ways. For one thing, it would require the government to respect the judgement of teachers and to treat them as professionals rather than proletarian objects of managerialism. And more importantly, such a rule would advantage bright people from poor schools and penalize mediocre ones from posh schools - which would undermine the point of the UK class system*.

What all this shows is that Cummings' radicalism is if not fake then at least limited. Cognitive diversity and weirdness must stop at the point when it challenges class privilege.

Of course, Cummings is not alone here. There's a long tradition of posh people pretending to be radical, up to the point at which their own privilege is challenged. George Orwell (not perhaps a wholly reliable witness) wrote in 1937:

The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting...most middle-class Socialists, while theoretically pining for a class-less society, cling like glue to their miserable fragments of social prestige.

Mutatis mutandis, we see similar things nowadays. Greg Dyke called the BBC "hideously white" without actually solving the problem. "Satirists" mocked the government but shat their pants when presented with a mildly social democratic alternative. Class tourists think that
poor is cool. We see it too in woke capitalists; in Guardian types who think that "cool and edgy" are terms of praise rather than indicators of unutterable kack; in some leftists who favour crank conspiracy theories over proper class analysis; and in celebs who profess to be green whilst using private jets. And this is not to mention the slightly different but equally long tradition of "angry young men" of the 50s, "hip young gunslingers" of the 70s or RCPers of the 80s becoming tiresome reactionaries.

Cummings' radical posture is therefore part of a long and widespread tendency. What's going on here?

The question gains force from an intellectual tradition - associated with Burke and Oakeshott - which has linked political conservatism (preserving inequality) with cognitive conservatism (scepticism about the power of rationality). If you're benefiting from the system, why rock the boat? The cognitive biases programme should, in principle, have reinforced this link by teaching us of the tight limits of our abilities.

So, why do we so often see those with a vested interest in preserving class hierarchies profess a form of radicalism? There are countless possible explanations, among them daddy issues and the tendency for posh schooling to inculcate the over-confident belief that one knows better than the wisdom of ages.

But there is a kinder explanation. Actually-existing British capitalism is unjust and inefficient. The smarter and better beneficiaries of the system recognise this. Yes, doing so whilst retaining class privilege makes them hypocrites, but hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

* It would, of course, be unfair to characterize this government as comprising posh mediocrities. Many of them cannot even aspire to the dizzy heights of mediocrity.