Melanie Phillips "keeps harping on about Gramsci", complains a baffled Jackie Ashley. "She genuinely believes that a cultural malaise now infects the country's intelligentsia..."
Surely not? Now I don't agree with everything Melanie P says on gay marriage, to name one subject, and I do think her style is often strident and apocalyptic. Yet as I pointed out in a column some time ago, she has got a lot of important things right. All Must Have Prizes, for instance, struck me as a brilliant account of how we've ruined our education system. And although I haven't read her new book, Londonistan, it does seem odd that she couldn't find a publisher for it in Britain.
As for how the long march through the institutions works, Mick Hume's column in today's Times offers a small but instructive example:
No doubt this teaching pack was put together by well-intentioned educationists, despite the inaccuracies and omissions. Of course it is not "pro al-Qaeda". But nor does it appear to be pro anything else.
PS: That's scary. I just looked at Stephen Pollard's blog. He uses almost the same words about MP. Great minds, and all that...