Starmer’s shadow cabinet split on private schools

Labour have made much of their VAT raid on private school fees, proudly trumpeting the policy as one of the few instances of a ‘popular’ tax. So it must have been to the chagrin of Starmer’s spinners then to see two of their leading frontbenchers contradicting each other about the costs of the policy. Appearing on GB News on Sunday morning, Emily Thornberry appeared to let the cat out of the bag when she discussed the consequences of pricing middle-class parents out of independent schools.

‘If we have to have larger classes, we have larger classes’ she admitted breezily when she was asked about the prospect of an exodus from the private sector into the state sector. After the Tories seized on her moment of candour, Thornberry’s colleague Bridget Phillipson was sent out to assure voters that, er, the Shadow Attorney-General was actually incorrect. Phillipson said this morning that it ‘just wasn’t right’ that we will see larger class sizes as a result of this policy, insisting that ‘what we are seeing across the state sector is a falling number of pupils in our classrooms.’