Sunak Has Little Of Substance To Counter Starmer's Jibes

Keir Starmer's first question in the Commons yesterday was about Winchester, the prime minister's private school.

- John Rentoul

It was a question that Tony Blair would never have asked, and not just because Blair went to Fettes, a fee-paying school in Edinburgh. Blair wouldn't have asked it because he agrees with Rishi Sunak, who said:

"This is a country that believes in opportunity not resentment." This isn't a question that can be settled by opinion poll. Some Labour people were delighted that the Daily Mail had used its front page twice this week to attack the party's policy of charging VAT on school fees. They point to poll findings that suggest the policy is popular, and were crowing that the Mail was giving it free publicity.

The policy is particularly popular if the question is asked about "ending the tax break" for private schools, or even, as Starmer put it, stopping the government "giving" a school such as Winchester £6m. But "higher taxes on someone else" is always popular in opinion polls, whether it is private schools, oil giants or non-doms. It may be just as significant that other polls find that most people in Britain would send their children to private school if they could afford it.