You’re the fastest runner in the world and you take your place at the starting line for the most important race of your life. You look up the track and see some obese guy in a suit standing five metres from the finishing tape. You complain to the race organiser but he tells you to mind your own business and concentrate on your own race. You think it must be some bizarre joke and it will all get sorted out later. The starting pistol sounds and you set off, running faster than you ever have in your life. But no matter how fast you run, no matter how good you are, you’ll never beat the fat man,puffing, panting and waddling his way to the finishing line.

‘Fattie wins the gold medal, and receives the adulation of the crowd.Two blondes throw themselves at him. Everyone tells him how brilliant he is.He says he owes it all to God and his loving family who bought him a place at the best of schools and paid a million dollars to allow him to start five metres from the finishing line. The crowd cheers and demands that the winner’s parents be allowed to stand on the podium alongside their brilliant son. A reporter asks father, mother and son what they think of the secondplaced athlete who broke the world record but still lost. They all shrug and say in unison, "Well, he’s not a member of our family, so who cares?” The crowd, full of like-minded families, rises to acclaim them. "If only we could all be like them,” they sigh. The world-record holder goes back to his dead end job in a sink estate. His colleagues tell him he’s a loser, and turn their backs on him.

Welcome to the anti-meritocratic world, this world. What are you going to do about it? Will you stand back and watch while cronyism, nepotism, the old school tie, the private club, the right university, the right accent, the right background, the right secret society, the right religion, the right family, destroy merit so that their chosen ones can prosper at your expense. It’s time to smash the conspiracy. Break up all the mechanisms that allow privileged groups to rig the system in their favour and penalise everyone who doesn’t belong to their cliques.

The Meritocracy Party seeks to ensure that everyone, as far as possible, starts the race of life from the same starting line. Then we'll see who the fastest runners really are; who deserves the medals, who should justly receive the acclaim and the rewards. At the moment, who you know (nepotism and cronyism) is vastly more important than what you know (merit). How often do we hear the mantra, 'Networking is the fastest way up the ladder.' Meritocracy will push this toxic ladder over. From now on, demonstrable talent, not your social connections, will be the fastest way to make progress in life.