If 100 MPs are in favour of grammar schools, then 550 are not.
Most, if not all, of those 550 probably believe in parental choice, which is incompatible with the grammar schools system. There, the choice is made by the school, not by the parents.
Last year's Labour manifesto was screamed down as the most left-wing in a generation. Well, yes. It was.
But then Labour elected its most left-wing Leader ever, so that manifesto became the Conservatives' programme for government.
Win or lose in 2020, the Conservatives in that Parliament are going to be roughly where Owen Smith is now. That is how it works.
"What about the referendum?" Well, what about it? 70 per cent of Labour seats voted Leave. In 2020, they will vote Labour. Just as they always do.
Theresa May's own party has already shot down the grammar schools kite in a hail of bullets. Exactly as she intended.
She wanted to kill the issue, even within her own party. And she has.
Last year's Labour manifesto was screamed down as the most left-wing in a generation. Well, yes. It was.
But then Labour elected its most left-wing Leader ever, so that manifesto became the Conservatives' programme for government.
Win or lose in 2020, the Conservatives in that Parliament are going to be roughly where Owen Smith is now. That is how it works.
"What about the referendum?" Well, what about it? 70 per cent of Labour seats voted Leave. In 2020, they will vote Labour. Just as they always do.
Theresa May's own party has already shot down the grammar schools kite in a hail of bullets. Exactly as she intended.
She wanted to kill the issue, even within her own party. And she has.
Parental choice is perfectly compatible with grammar schools if-as the polls show-parents want them brought back. Making it illegal for parents to open one-as the last Labour Government did-was an explicitly totalitarian attempt to deny parents and local communities any choice whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteThe leftwing state will decide what schools you are allowed to open, says the law.
The last Labour manifesto wasn't the most leftwing in a generation.
By far the most leftwing manifesto in a generation was that of Tony Blair in 1997.
Abolition of hereditary peers, devolution, human rights, the social chapter, elected mayors, making it illegal to open a new grammar school....
Peter Hitchens saw the full horrors ahead, way back then.
As a central New Labour apparatchik recently openly admitted, the New Labour project was "far more revolutionary than anything ever proposed by Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters."
The State will decide which schools it is going to pay for, yes. Or what else would you farm out to opinion polls?
DeleteThere is no parental choice whatever in the operation of a selective education system. By definition.