Does anyone consider how this new policy forcing universities to discriminate both against privately educated kids, or state-educated kids from top selective schools, could result in a hugely damaging brain drain as their parents simply choose foreign institutions instead.
Elite universities in America are awash with huge endowments for scholarships and they value the superb education provided by the best British schools. They will snap up all the bright students, as will other elite institutions in Australia, Israel and India (one of the most selective engineering institutions in India is already harder to get into than Oxford or Cambridge).
Britain cannot afford to lose this reservoir of often expensively educated talent. Our universities will deteriorate markedly if they are forced to take in students who are relatively ignorant and ill-educated, and if they introduce bridging courses to educate them properly first, their fees will simply soar ever higher and higher.
The British universities will be left with the dregs, and their standards will plummet just as surely as general school standards in this country have done in the past 30 years. And for the same reason. Because of meddlesome, well-intentioned politicians, whose own children always have the contacts to succeed come what may.