It is often unreasonable, dangerous and profoundly dishonest coming as it does mainly from a press whose own hypocrisy and humbug defies parody. One of the nastiest exhibitions of this has been the Mail on Sunday's assault on the Blairs' daughter Kathryn for getting a sought-after place at a Catholic girls' school in Hammersmith, six miles away from Downing Street. Now, whatever the Press Complaints Commission decides about the Mail's intrusion on a child's life, the girl will arrive at a new school tagged with a slur of favouritism when, God knows, it must be bad enough to be driven in from Downing Street anyway. Children from the local primary school were turned down by the Sacred Heart comprehensive while the Prime Minister's daughter from further away gained a place. The accusation is that the Blairs sought out the best comprehensive they could find instead of sending her to the nearest or worst.
Church schools tend to be subtly selective, which is why their places are in such high demand.
They are immensely popular schools not because of a sudden religious zeal on the part of parents, but because religious schools often get away with back-door selection. Maybe more church-goers are middle class or perhaps the middle classes are just better at pretending to be religious, but they squeeze into them in disproportionate numbers. At least the Blairs are sincerely religious, unlike a great many parents desperately seeking a vicar's note in order to qualify spuriously. Presumably the 11 disappointed children from the local feeder primary were turned down because Sacred Heart chose pupils they liked the look of better from further afield, for whatever reason. The Blair's daughter is only one of these.