A school population consisting only of the very bright generates a special learning culture: broad-based, rapid and geared to achievement. That has to be good for its pupils: success at school facilitates success in later life. It is also good for our complicated and fast-changing society. To safeguard its quality and competitiveness, it needs a constant input of the best minds educated to the fullest extent possible. In other words, an elite.

Yes, an elite. One of the oddities of this nation is that it can simultaneously hallow doubtful elites like the House of Lords and rubbish useful elites like grammar schools.

The argument that grammar schools for the few means secondary moderns for the many is dead. There is no GCECSE apartheid now: the GCSE has ended it. Consequently, there is no reason, in principle, why grammar schools and comprehensives should not co-exist.

As to the mechanism of selection, experience shows that a combination of parental choice, consultation with primary schools and an appeals procedure works just fine.

And the Labour party should be more supportive of grammar schools than the rest. Its thinking is naturally collective and, as the party of dissent, it likes to see itself as progressive.

Moreover, socialism by definition regards the state as an agent of national welfare. Taking these together, the People’s party should find no embarrassment in organising the best to serve the rest, Clause Four or no Clause Four.

In fact, there is a strong cross-party case both for fostering those grammars that already exist and for improving their number. This country - currently 11th in the European prosperity league - needs a dogma-free exploitation of its assets if it is to remain prosperous. Its grammar schools must be among these. They are geared as much to surpassing examinations as to passing them; they are inherently able to meet the nation’s top-end requirements across the subject range.

Dr Colin Butler is senior English master at Borden Grammar School, Sittingbourne, Kent.