The meritocracy is striking back. Responding to years of denouncement from Ivy League academics and leftish wonks, Adrian Wooldridge is about to publish The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Economist<\/em> hack has taken to various newspapers to state his case that meritocracy is in fact good ahead of the book’s launch. Writing in the <\/a>Times<\/a> <\/em>on Monday, he said modern societies are \u201coutraged at the mere smell of nepotism or favouritism or discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Nepotism is indeed rather stinky, and journalists have spent much of the last year attacking the government for handing pandemic procurement contracts to its mates. But it must be hard sniffing out such corruption when the fourth estate is bathed in familial odours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take Flora Gill, daughter of the late Sunday Times <\/em>food critic AA Gill and former government minister Amber Rudd. Between filing pieces about flicking her bean<\/a> over the chancellor of the exchequer, Gill junior has clocked up bylines for the Sunday Times<\/em> and previously hosted a show on Times Radio alongside her mother \u2013 doubtless purely on merit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n