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Re Sir Richard Richard and "When people like Chakrabarti siphon their children into grammars and private schools, they weaken their local comprehensive"

That's actually quite true. The overall standards of comprehensives do drop when the 'selective' (for want of a better word) kids are taken out. The problem for parents is that while the overall standards for all the kids in the comp rises when they aren't taken out, the standards of those individual kids who would have been selected out tends to drop.

So, for a parent, on an intellectual & political level, you might prefer the comprehensive model but it's hard to send your kids there when, on a personal level, you know they'll probably do worse there than they would at a selective school.

Its a no brainer for selective schools if you've got the choice and its an option.