Labour top brass all used private schools - now they want to pull the ladder up

I was born in a Labour-voting working class town in the north. We had a proper Coronation Street cobbles outside, black and white TV with three channels (the horror!) and until I was about six, an outside loo.

Trust me, so-called school of hard-knocks Labour boot-girl Angela Rayner lived like Ivana Trump by comparison.

However, what we did have was two very good Labour MPs - the legendary Barbara Castle and Jack Straw who, despite his elevated political status was a proper constituency MP with an intelligence matched only by his common sense and decency. I know… and a Labour MP! Imagine that!

Back then I spent every Saturday down the library reading books with my mum.

Ah, a sharp-elbowed tiger-mother pushing her kids, I hear you mutter.

Er, no, it was so she didn’t have to put the heating on.

Anyway, what Labour promised back then was that if you worked hard in life and got yourself educated you could become socially mobile, you could aspire to more than the factory gates that were your lot, that one day you might even play with the posh kids.

And god forgive me, I bought it.

Fast forward to today - and this working-class s**t-kicker has had the temerity and good fortune to put his kids into an independent school.

Just like Sir Keir Starmer.

And Jeremy Corbyn.

And Momentum-loving lefty John McDonnell.

And Diane Abbott’s kid.

And other Momentum lefty Jon Lansman.

Oh and Lindsay Hoyle.

And ex-Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.

And arch-lefty Hillary Benn.

And Labour peer Lord Adonis.

And Croydon Central MP Sarah Jones.

And Ealing North MP James Murray.

You’re probably getting the idea by now.

And yes, putting my kids through paid-for school, means that Series-5 Beamer will have to wait and the 10-year-old Fiat will have to struggle on a few more years, but it is my choice how I spend my money, it is my aspiration, and frankly, after initial working-class qualms about private education, I’m very happy I made this choice because the school is brilliant and my kids very happy.

So thanks old-fashioned Labour for that.

And curse you modern Labour for taking this away from me.

Labour’s keynote policy in the election is to make private education too expensive for those of us just about scratching enough together to pay their kids through. We’re going to have to remove our kids and dump them in the state system so you can pay for them.

But what the Party is really saying is “get back in your box you working class oiks, the private education we enjoyed is not for the likes of you.”

Oh don’t worry, the Russian oligarchs and the mega-wealthy, be they from Britain or increasingly China, won’t bat an eyelid but my kids, along with an estimated 75,000 others from “just about coping” families will be dumped into the state system.

Where they going to put them Keir? Because your would-be Home Secretary Yvette Cooper didn’t have a flaming clue this morning as she dodged the question being put by Camilla Tominey on GB News FOUR times.

Because Labour doesn’t have a plan to contain this disastrous policy.

This juvenile student-level politics plan will do these things:

* End up costing the country money;

* Make education in the state sector markedly worse;

* Destroy thousands of kids’ life-chances by wrecking their education mid-stream.

* Make the surviving private schools massively more elitist;

* Provide superb schools for the offspring of our rich friends in China and Russia;

It is stupid, stupid, stupid beyond belief. The work of a socialist-deluded 18-year-old who needs his head screwing on properly.

Cautionary tale: when I was that socialist-deluded 18-year-old who needed his head screwing on properly I went for a job at the Tax office.

Two incredibly sober-suited, stern-faced men asked me: “What do you think makes a good tax?”

With the cast-iron certainty of a Marxism-schooled Robin Hood I snarled “one that takes from the rich and gives to the poor.”

As I picked up my coat on the way out I asked: “Just what is the answer to that question?”

In unison, I swear, they said: “One that is cost-effective.”

It is still the correct answer to that question.

Sir Keir and Labour please take note.