The Labour Campaign Against Private Schools, supported by all Corbyn’s media outriders and a significant chunk of the Parliamentary Labour Party has today hit out against the England cricket team for having privately schooled players. Instead of expanding the teaching of cricket in state schools, their solution is to ban independent education…

Guido has crunched the numbers, and not only is this a policy that core Labour figures like Attlee fought hard against, it’s also an incredibly expensive one. Private education accounts for 7% of all school pupils, and more than double that for pupils over the age of 16. That’s 630,000 pupils that the state would suddenly have to pay for, at a per pupil cost of £5,870. That’s a spending commitment of £3.7 billion, almost double the social care funding Labour promised in 2017. What a sticky wicket…

On top of this, independent schools and their suppliers paid £4.1 billion in tax last year, meaning abolishing the sector would see taxpayers having to stump up an extra £7.8 billion in total, becoming the second largest single spending commitment Labour has made, ahead of spending on health, social security, pensions, or public sector pay. Schools would still be segregated by catchment area house prices…