KIER Starmer’s avowed intent to impose VAT on private school fees is just as short-sighted as Labour’s long campaign to abolish all grammar schools - the ‘Jewels in the crown’ of the state Education system.

More than 600,000 children attend private schools in England and, if Starmer and his class-war zealots were to achieve their ultimate aim of getting rid of private education altogether, those children would have to be educated by the state at huge extra cost.

Far more than what VAT would bring in.

Parents who send their children to private schools are saving the state the cost of educating their children

At the very least the imposition of VAT on private school fees would mean that many parents, unable to afford the extra cost, would be forced to remove their children and place them in state schools.

The subsequent loss of income would also mean that many private schools would have to stop funding bursaries and scholarships –which would have a huge negative impact on gifted children from poorer families.

What makes Starmer’s latest threat all the harder to swallow is the fact that he was educated privately – as was that arch left-winger, Jeremy Corbyn, whose former girlfriend, Diane Abbott, sent her son to private school – despite having roundly berated some of her parliamentary Labour colleagues for doing so.

In fact, some seventeen percent of Labour MPs educate their children to private schools.

Hypocrites, the lot of ‘em.

ROBERT READMAN

Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth