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.
This story is from the December 01, 2022 edition of The Independent.
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This story is from the December 01, 2022 edition of The Independent.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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