State school pupils are 'potted plants', said Jacob Rees-Mogg

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There is nothing more absurd than an Old Etonian posing as an anti-elitist.

Anyone who has been taken in by Jacob Rees-Mogg's act should read this piece Andy McSmith published back in 2006:

State school pupils are 'potted plants', says Tory 

One of the leading members of the David Cameron generation of new Tories created a storm yesterday by comparing people who were not privately educated and did not go to Oxford or Cambridge universities to "potted plants". 

Jacob Rees-Mogg, who will be fighting one of the Tories' target seats at the next election, also gave the impression that he thinks that anyone educated in the state sector is incapable of writing an "articulate" letter. 

Mr Rees-Mogg was asked for his reaction to a survey by the BBC programme Newsnight which showed that 28 per cent of those on the A-list of people that Mr Cameron wants as future Tory MPs are from Oxford or Cambridge, and a majority - 52 per cent - were privately educated. 

Mr Rees-Mogg, the Eton and Oxford-educated son of the Tory peer and former editor of The Times, William Rees-Mogg, said: "Oxford and Cambridge are world-renowned universities that get the crème of British academic life. It would be absolutely perverse to be biased against some of the cleverest people in the country. 

"We don't want to make it harder for intellectually able people to be Tory party candidates. The Tory party, when it's elected, has to be able to form a government and it's not going to be able to form a government if it has potted plants as candidates simply to make up quotas."

Given the damage caused by its former pupils in recent years, I would put Eton into special measures and look for more candidates educated in the state sector as a matter of urgency.