Do what I say, not what I did

In principle, I don’t think private schools are A Good Thing. They exist for a reason: that parents are able to buy what they consider to be the best possible education for their children and fast path them into better job opportunities. They do so because of the evidence. The top people in the land, and many top politicians, were privately educated.

Prime Ministers are usually Oxbridge educated, very often privately educated before that. Today’s politicians are of the same ilk. Of the major political leaders, only the Lib Dems’ Jo Swinson went to a state school. Most of Labour’s top team, including Jeremy Corbyn, attended elite grammar schools or, like his posh minders Seumas Milne and Andrew Drummond-Murray, went to some of the most expensive private schools in the land.

Corbyn’s son went to a top private school, Cambridge University’s Diane Abbott made a point of sending her son to a top private school. So did Shadow Attorney General Shami Chakratbarti’s son. Well, you might ask. Why not? They only want to do the best for their children, after all. The problem for the Labour Party is that they now want to abolish private schools.

All well and good. As an issue at the next election, which is only weeks away, Labour’s new policy will be front and centre. My guess is that their issue will be hypocrisy.

We know already that Labour is a cesspit of patronage and nepotism. Corbyn’s son is employed by John McDonnell, Len McCluskey’s former partner and the mother of his child is general secretary of the Labour Party, Andrew Drummond-Murray’s daughter is employed in Corbyn’s office. Labour is wedded to the past not just in its unreconstructed 1980s politics, but in its consistency of giving jobs to the boys and girls.

I don’t think the electorate will allow Labour to get away with this one. When its elderly leader gets up to announce the abolition of private schools, they will think to a man and woman: “Hang on a minute: if it’s good enough for him to attend one of the top grammar schools in the land, it’s okay to send his own son to a private school and it’s just dandy for his closest political ally to hand his son a well-paid job, why does he want to stop everyone else doing it?” They will look at Corbyn and his elderly pals who now control Labour and ask whether he is trying to kick away the ladder of opportunity that he himself enjoyed. This is not how I am presenting it because I didn’t send my children to private schools or attend a private school myself. But this is how many will see it.

The abolition of private schools will look good until voters look beyond the headlines. They may see these people as women and men of principle or they may seem them as hypocrites. I’m in the latter camp.

One day, our society must address equality, including equality in terms of education. But it must get to its destination by way of consent, by way of evolution. This will take time. A bunch of elderly middle class, and indeed upper class, politicians, like Corbyn and his top team enjoyed privilege and don’t want anyone else to have it. That’s how it will appear and other parties and the media will pick Labour apart.