Last week David Cameron had a policy launch at  Kingsmead school in Enfield, where he set out the Conservative party’s education policy. Yesterday Ed Miliband did the same at his alma mater, “the socialist’s Eton”, Haverstock School. Clearly the political parties like to use the school setting for their propaganda purposes.

These are state schools, the parties don’t pay for the use of the venues. That is a taxpayer subsidy. It is also an unforgivable use of a school for partisan purposes, all the party paraphernalia has no place in a school. The state is supposed to be non-partisan and schools in particular should not be used in this manner. If you let mainstream centrists in you will have to let fringe extremists in, that would not be a healthy development for an open society. Politicians should play their games away from school playgrounds…