Labour's attack on school fees is forcing the Tories into a class war

I’m currently spending half term with friends. We have eight children between us, and, as with every other middle class social gathering I’ve been at recently, talk has inevitably turned to schools – and Labour’s manifesto pledge to add VAT to fees at private institutions.

Our collective offspring cover the gamut of state and private pupils, and the post-dinner chat has become extremely heated at times. Whether true blue Conservatives, occasional Tory voters or never voted Tory in our lives, here we are, unable to talk about anything else.

Well, congratulations Sir Keir. Because by poking this particular hornets’ nest with a policy that, lest we forget, will affect the families of just seven per cent of voters and which will, according to its most optimistic predictions, raise a comparatively small £1.7 billion towards education spending (which totalled £105.5 billion in 2023-23, with £57.3 billion of that going on schools), Labour has effectively forced the Tories to start fighting a class war – the last thing they need to be doing at this point in time. 

Right-leaning voters like me and my friends – or even the Left-leaning ones who send their kids to private schools – are wrapping themselves in complete knots over this. We all fall into the category of the comfortably off, but far from super-rich: if we’re paying, it’s day school, not boarding, unless we’re in receipt of some extra help like the military families I know; it’s working two jobs bloody hard and digging down the sides of the sofa every term to scratch the fees together – or it’s forking out on a more expensive house to make it into the catchment area of a decent state school and paying for extra-curricular sports and music lessons.

Most of us would be totally screwed if the 20 per cent comes in, particularly if it happens in one fell swoop. 

But middle-class parents agonise about this stuff – not least because, while they don’t always have the choice themselves, they will definitely have an awareness of what the private school system offers in terms of outcome. And however we’re funding it, it’s about our kids getting a rounded education, not just learning how to read and add up.

Let’s face it, our kids are probably going to be OK regardless. As one friend who is also scratching the fees together each term correctly puts it: “It’s parental education and involvement that are the greatest wealth.” Our middle-class children have been read to every night, taken to concerts and plays and exhibitions every holiday, know that the world can be their oyster.

We can huff and puff all we like about the unfairness of higher fees, or why Labour thinks it should be up to taxpayers paying for private school to address educational inequality, or why its sums don’t add up, but our children have been privileged from the word go and most of them have good prospects ahead of them regardless of where they go to school. 

However, this is where Labour wants us to focus our attention. Lots of hot air has been expended on whether its pledge is fair, or whether it’s a performative jab at the wealthy with muddled messaging. But as we go round and round in circles debating the merits of some people having more money than others, Labour is forcing a class debate – and revealing the truly nasty side of some voters – when what we should really be having is a debate about the quality of education, and how much that realistically costs.  

I’ve heard some dispiriting stories during this debacle – of parents moaning that, with two kids in private school they’ll find the ‘unfair’ VAT too hard to pay, even while one parent doesn’t work; of champagne socialists nodding along at the benefits of the state system as long as it’s for other people’s kids.

It’s all grist to Labour’s mill – and, to be fair to Labour, does a good job of highlighting the massive disparity of educational opportunity between the haves and have-nots.