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Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator, where each week we look at three pieces from the magazine with the writers behind them.

I'm Lara Prendergars, the Spectator's executive editor.

On this week's episode, we'll be discussing whether identity has now replaced talent,

we'll be asking how the Tories should respond to Labour's recent attack ads, and we'll be looking at the humanists of the past.

First up, in his cover piece for the magazine, journalist Adrian Waldridge argues that

meritocracy is under attack.

He joins me now, alongside the journalist and author of Chums, How a Tiny Cast of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, Simon Cooper.

Adrian, in your piece, you say that the traditional societal pyramid with the upper class at the top and the lower class at the bottom

has now been inverted by what you call a new culture which prizes virtue over meritocracy.

Can you start by explaining what exactly you mean by that?

Well, traditional society was one which promoted the virtues of certain groups, primarily the upper classes, and also to some

extent the clerical classes, over the lower classes. They claimed that they ruled by right,

and that right derived from certain qualities of the group. I think in the 19th century,

we had a great sort of liberal revolution,

a meritocratic revolution, which asserted the rights of the individual. It said that the

society should be driven by individuals and should be judged by its ability to give those

individuals the tools that they needed to succeed in life. And I think that sort of

drove a widening of opportunity from the middle of the 19th century onwards, which sort of reached

its peak in many ways after the Second World War. And what we've had recently is a revolt against

...