Equality of opportunity is an even worse idea than equality of outcome. No Conservative should be anything other than implacably & passionately opposed to both of them.

Equality of opportunity or "meritocracy" is the concept that the only proper determinant of our relative flourishing in life is our biological merit.+

+It says: if you are beautiful & clever & even-tempered & have good digestion you must succeed; if you are ugly & stupid & choleric & have uneven energy flows you must fail; & no-one is permitted to change that.+

+It says: each of us must flourish or fail alone. We are not permitted to help our family, co-religionists, political allies, those who have done us favours in the past or anyone else to do any better than their narrowly biological merits entail.+

+No special internship in my firm for the daughter of the woman who saved my life from a fire as children. No special place in the village play for the stuttering half-blind old solider. No scholarship for devout followers of my faith. Only biological merit counts.+

+No Conservative should accept this. Conservatives should believe in love; social bonds; built bonds of affinity & duty; obligations & favoured chances. We should deny, absolutely, that everyone must rise or fall entirely on his or her own steam.+

+Equality of opportunity is a concept of a Nietzschean dystopia - one of the worst political schemes ever seriously put forward. Yet of course almost no-one actually believes in it.+

+What most mean is "A society of opportunity". But equality of opportunity does not mean more opportunity any more than equality of wealth means more wealth. Of course we want a society of more opportunity. There will be more opportunity when opportunity is unequal than equal.