The UK government has replaced promotion of the most capable with promotion of the most politically loyal.

Michael Young, in The Rise of the Meritocracy, was perceptive. He saw that if society offered enough social mobility for capable people to get out of the working class won their own, that would leave the remaining workers with no one capable enough to organize them to stand up for their rights.

We must educate and promote capable people anyway, because the alternative is to let the incapable run things — but we must somehow prevent this from resulting in telling the less "meritorious" to suffer low pay and a life of hardship.