Graham Brady was the product of a grammar school. It gave him a good education, helped him go to Durham University and set him on the path to becoming a Conservative MP. Most of all, it gave him a cause. After his election to Parliament in 1997, a time that was then considered to represent the nadir of Tory fortunes, Brady made his maiden speech on the Education (Schools) Bill and declared, ‘I believe passionately in the role of the grammar schools as the greatest of social levellers.’

Brady’s rise up what Disraeli called the ‘greasy pole’ was rapid. Despite being the youngest Conservative MP, after a year he was elected to the executive of the 1922 Committee. Another year passed and he took his first step onto the shadow ministerial ladder as a parliamentary private secretary. Brady was clearly going places. But ensconced within the cohort elected to the Commons four years after Brady was a different type of Tory MP: privately educated, modernising and going places even faster. Soon, the archetypes of this new breed of Conservative MP, David Cameron and George Osborne, had taken over the leadership of the party. Their style of politics left Brady cold, and they left him languishing in the relatively junior role of shadow Europe minister.

In 2007, Brady’s and Cameron’s great causes – selective education and Tory modernisation – clashed when it became clear that a Cameron government would not overturn Labour’s ban on new grammar schools (the ban remains in place today). Brady thought that Cameron, the product of privilege, was doing down the