£50m is not a trivial amount, it is the amount taxpayers spend on free milk in schools. Winston Churchill once said

“There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.”

It doesn’t make political sense to cut this expenditure, it will evoke “Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher” memories. As keen on deficit cutting as Guido is, and at the risk of being expelled from membership of the Taxpayers Alliance, this seems too full of potent symbolism to be given a priority. Mike Smithson suspects it is a ruse, only floated to be given up as a public concession to LibDems who are getting squeamish at the sight of blood from the coming cuts.

If it is, it is too clever by half…