Fees, Office

Private school fees corrupt the parliamentary process. To pay them, the Conservatives insist that an MP has to be paid a gargantuan salary. They then take other work as well, but by then the meeting of their initial demand has drawn other, mostly Labour, candidates who were attracted by the money.

Plenty of people would happily become Labour MPs for £40,000 per annum, and a certain number would do it for half that, which would still be more than many people had to live on even in London. They would never get near it, though. People with pound signs in their eyes also have very sharp elbows.

But the present salary is the existing rate for the job. The principles of trade unionism demand that everyone who was entitled to it take it in full, and that it not be cut, either in absolute terms or by being allowed to fall behind inflation. Level up, not down.

Moreover, private schools do regularly provide left-wing figures with a platform that they are seldom or never afforded elsewhere. It is in the running of state schools that the Liberal Establishment in academia and the media meets the right-wing Labour machine in local government. We ought to be bypassing them both.

To secure the representation that had never been afforded by those who had presumed to speak for our people, but never to our people, we would indeed have to do deals with the Conservatives. We could not possibly get less out of them than we had ever managed to get out of the Keir Starmers of the world.