Does Boris Johnson Belong with the Churchills and the Disraelis?

From London, R.L.F. Calder writes to The Economist in order to

take issue with Bagehot’s remark, in his column on Boris Johnson, that the Tories punted and “won big” when they chose Winston Churchill, another “maverick”, as their leader (May 25th). 

Churchill became prime minister not because the Conservatives thought he could lead them to electoral success, but because he was the only figure who could form a national coalition to tackle the worst crisis in British history.
Britain did “win big”, but the Conservatives did not.

At Churchill’s first electoral test, in 1945, they spectacularly lost. Churchill, like Benjamin Disraeli, another Tory leader mentioned in the column, achieved greatness by service to their country, not to their party. Their biggest accomplishments were cross-party in nature: leading the wartime coalition for Churchill, passing the 1867 Reform Act with the support of radical Liberals for Disraeli.

In Germany, free education leads to irrelevant courses, hopelessly overcrowded public universities, and a drop-out rate of about 30%

From Wentorf, Roger Graves, a lecturer with 20 years of experience in Germany, testifies about an Economist article on Under-qualified Germans:

Another reason for the lack of skilled labour in Germany is the reluctance of school-leavers to take advantage of the admirable dual-education system, and instead enroll at a university (“Opening up a crack”, May 18th). The problem is that every pupil who has passed the school-leaving exam, the Abitur, has the constitutional right to a place at university, even if he or she has to wait some semesters and has no real academic inclinations or talents. The result is a proliferation of abstruse and socially irrelevant courses, a drop-out rate of about 30% (a shocking waste of human and financial resources) and the lack of skilled workers you mentioned. 

Having spent 20 years as a lecturer, I can testify to the often poor quality of students at hopelessly overcrowded public universities and the high quality of those at private institutions, which have strict admission requirements. But in our modern, democratic society everybody is at least a manager and selection is frowned upon. That attitude is leading to big problems for the German economy.

(Danke Schön fûr Instapundit)