SOCIAL mobility in Britain has, in the words of the government’s own commission on the matter, been “stagnant” in recent years. The question the left should be asking about this isn’t so much “how is this to be tackled?” so much as “why do we need social mobility?”

Social mobility is all about saying we should have an equal chance in the rat race. Well we all know who rat races are for. Better that we look toward social equality and a better life for everyone.

Social mobility has its advocates everywhere.

Take sometime education secretary Justine Greening declaring “improving social mobility is a defining challenge for us as a nation.” Yet when it comes to tackling the most serious issues facing us talk is, at best, misplaced. At its worst it is a smokescreen designed to obscure a determination to preserve inequality and unfairness.

The Institute for Fiscal studies talks of “deaths of despair” and rising inequality making a “mockery of democracy.” They are surely right. Social mobility though doesn’t tackle inequality — in fact as a concept it’s predicated on the idea that inequality is going to persist.

Its aim is making it easier for some people to gain the benefits of an unequal world. In other words an equality of opportunity to perpetuate inequality.

Radicals shouldn’t be complaining that a slum child is unlikely to become a millionaire. The complaint should be that we have slums while we have millionaires.

What’s needed aren’t ladders out of poverty for those lucky enough to be able to climb them — but a society where what people need is within reach.

Prioritising social mobility obscures this goal. Instead it sustains the illusion that because some, through luck or talent “make it,” that anyone could, and therefore the rewards at the top are justified while those at the bottom deserve no more than they have.

Of course no-one ever argues for real social mobility. Social mobility is only ever seen as providing ladders to talented and determined working-class people to make it into the middle class. Actual social mobility would also involve snakes — in the form of the removal of those social factors which prevent the inept but comfortable or connected descending into the ranks of the plebs.

As well as relegating the pursuit of equality to a secondary goal, pursuing social mobility reinforces the idea of social distinction. The aim isn’t simply material improvement, it’s about status and cachet. The mobility part of this isn’t just from East end to West end, it’s from being “one of them” to being “one of us” (or vice versa depending on who’s observing).

“The children of hospital cleaners should have as much chance to be medics as the children of hospital doctors” is the sort of line we usually get. No-one ever suggests that the children of hospital doctors should want to be cleaners. Nor do those who declare social mobility as an aim suggest that the privileges of the rich and powerful are seriously disrupted, far less removed.

These are of course the real barriers to social mobility. Piety about social mobility without, say, positively confiscatory rules on inheritance and trust funds is camouflaging not tackling privilege. Social mobility enthusiasts might well argue — and indeed have in the past — for scholarships to public schools. Those interested in changing society will argue for the abolition of private education.

Real community, RH Tawney argued, consists in “equality of social consideration.” This is not the aim of social mobility — which is about giving the opportunity to rise from, not with, the class.

And there’s the rub. At root social mobility isn’t about saying that people should be the best they can be — and have every chance to be the best they can be. It’s really saying that being working class isn’t good enough, and no-one is going make it good enough — you need to be something else. This, almost by definition, buys (sometimes literally) into a whole set of hegemonic values.

This was one of the points of Michael Young’s Meritocracy. It’s often forgotten that this was a satire precisely about social mobility and equality of opportunity. Inequality couldn’t be objected to because it was based on educational merit, neither could social divisions.

That the result was a dystopian nightmare is seldom noticed. Certainly not by the tattered remnants of Blairite right who with perfect ignorance still witter on about seeking a “meritocracy.”

Social mobility trades the idea of equality for its pale shadow “equality of opportunity.” This isn’t of course to say that equality of opportunity is a bad thing — but unless there is a fair degree of equality of outcome then real equality of opportunity is pretty much illusory.

It’s not social mobility we need — it’s social reconstruction.