We must protect our meritocratic principles at all costs

There remains, just about, a consensus in Britain that admissions to university should be based on achievement alone. Our meritocratic institutions still take in students on the basis of their grades at school and extracurricular activities, notwithstanding the efforts of some politicians to create categories of applicant who would be given special treatment based subjectively on their background, “identity”, or “experience”. America shows where such disturbing developments would take us.

Harvard is being sued by a group of students for discriminating against them in applications on the basis of their race, and last week their lawsuit…