What a spiteful government of Scrooges this Starmer regime is turning out to be. Very little money will be made from slapping inheritance tax on farms but a prairie of human misery is guaranteed. There is heartbreaking talk of older farmers who are contemplating ending their lives before the deadline. At least Mad Ed Miliband gets to put a billion Chinese solar panels on the prime agricultural land some families have farmed for centuries and Big Ange can build 1.5 million houses for recent immigrants on any green space that’s left.
Rupert Brooke said that, when a soldier died in the First World War, there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England. At this rate, our country will be a foreign field with a corner of England left.
Too bad, snarl the Labour Scrooges. Don’t let common sense or compassion get in the way of Sir Keir Starmer’s “six measurable milestones, five missions, three foundations, two plans for change”. And Alan Partridge in a pear tree.
The cruellest act in this grim socialist revenger’s tragedy on the middle classes is the imposition of 20 per cent VAT on school fees. Economists predict this could cost more than it raises while simultaneously causing distress to thousands of happy, well-educated children whose parents are obliged to move them to the state system – if a place is available. I mean, why should the comrades worry about kids’ welfare when there’s a terrific opportunity for class warfare?
The tone was set by that thin-skinned harpy, Bridget Phillipson, the laughably-entitled Secretary of State for Education. Phillipson gave the game away when she posted on X (formerly Twitter): “Our state schools need teachers more than private schools need embossed stationery. Our children need mental health support more than private schools need new pools. Our students need careers advice more than private schools need AstroTurf pitches.”
Embossed stationery? What a nasty, narrow, jealous, Davina Spart view of private education. No mention of the superb teaching and pastoral care that attracts students from influential families around the globe, creating a vast amount of soft power for the UK. Nor the rigorous science and maths which helps us keep up with the top brains internationally. Not to mention the world-class music, drama and sport which feed our orchestras, choirs, films and theatres and mean that the privately educated go on to bag a disproportionate number of Britain’s Oscars and Olympic gold medals.
