They are both rubbish, of course. But Liz Truss is still doing that thing where she goes on about how the awfulness of her state education under the Tories made her a Tory. It is very, very odd. Mind you, so is she. She is probably going to win, but I give her a year.
I am the last person to defend the right-wing Labour machine in local government, but if you think that there is blame to be allocated here, then do not try and allocate it to the council. Councils have had very little role in education since 1988, when Truss was 13.
She went to school entirely under a Conservative Government, and mostly under Margaret Thatcher, who centralised the state curriculum, and for whom the seat in question, Leeds North East, never missed an opportunity to vote. Yet now Truss dresses up as Thatcher in order tell people how her sartorial idol's policies ruined the lives of everyone else at the comfortable, suburban school that sent her to Oxford.
The alternative is Rishi Sunak, who thinks that it is possible for people on middle incomes to scrimp and save enough to raise the fees for Winchester. Yet we are quite possibly going to get him before the end of this Parliament. We are practically certain to get him eventually. It has been planned since he was a schoolboy.
Someone told me Sunak's teacher picked him out as a future PM when he was nine.
ReplyDeleteI do not doubt that for a second.
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