Pray indulgence for a rant about the present nature of political discourse in Britain. What does Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer sent to prison for shooting dead a burglar, have in common with Laura Spence, the clever state-school girl refused a place at Oxford because her interviewers did not think her clever enough? Both illustrate Bagehot's law, which says that the smaller the number of people affected by some policy or proposal, the bigger the fuss politicians are willing to risk making about it. The newspapers have brimmed with Ms Spence ever since Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, called her rejection by Magdalen College "an absolute scandal". But how big is the universe of people affected by this "absolute scandal"?
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