New Canterbury Labour MP Rosie Duffield campaigned on an anti-grammars platform at the election, saying she wanted “no new grammar schools” as they are “not the way forward” and the 11+ is a “horrible, divisive and stressful thing”. It would be pretty dumbfoundingly hypocritical for Rosie to send her own children to grammars and then pull the ladder up, right?  

Yes, both of Duffield’s sons went to Simon Langton Grammar School in Canterbury. One of them still currently goes there, despite mummy not wanting other people’s kids to have that choice. Daniel Hamilton, a likely Tory challenger at the next election, has written to Duffield asking for clarification, pointedly noting: “how many families and young people in East Kent have benefited from our excellent local grammar schools”. As Labour grammars hypocrites go, this is up there…

Theresa May went ad hominem at PMQs, attacking Labour’s frontbench for pulling up the drawbridge. As Guido has noted previously:

• Jeremy Corbyn – Attended a grammar school. His son went to a grammar school.

• John McDonnell – Attended a grammar school.

• Seumas Milne – Sent both his son and daughter to grammar schools.

• Diane Abbott – Attended a grammar school and sent her son to a private school.

• Jon Trickett – Attended a grammar school.

• Grahame Morris – Attended a grammar school.

• Paul Flynn – Attended a grammar school.

Another happy reader…

Julia Hartley-Brewer gives Tory Education select committee chair Neil Carmichael a pasting on TalkRadio for opposing grammar school expansion yet sending all three of his own children to grammars. The Corbynistas have double standards too, but this from Carmichael takes the biscuit…

The Teach First charity are circulating a letter aimed at lobbying Tory MPs to vote against grammar schools – and the man behind it is an Oxbridge-educated former private schoolboy. Teach First ambassador Louka Travlos is seeking to drum up enough covert support that he can get an anti-grammars letter published by a newspaper, telling colleagues:

“We need signatures from at least 3000 members of our community if the newspaper is going to be able to make the letter into a story. Crucially we need to do it without social media. If the letter is tweeted and shared publicly no paper will be interested in making it into a story.”

On his personal Facebook page however, black-tie wearing Travlos discusses how he himself enjoyed the merits of a selective education:

“My parents were wealthy. They sent me to an expensive private primary, Orme House, where they drilled me on exam practice… I remember the visceral fear of failure and having to go to…(shudder) State school…. But my parents could afford specialist private tuition, so I passed.”

His selective education allowed him to go on to study PPE at Oxford. Talk about pulling up the drawbridge…

Here’s what Shami Chakrabarti had to say about sending her son to an £18,000 private school while criticising selective education: pic.twitter.com/N5vVGcEQc3

— ITV News (@itvnews) October 9, 2016

Pesto asks Shami how she can square her opposition to grammars with sending her son to private school. “I live in a nice big house and eat nice food…”

Labour’s new party political broadcast features a segment on how grammar schools are “elitist“. The Corbynista voicing his opposition to selective education is Abhijay Sood, an Imperial College student who is mates with the Momentum crowd. Naturally Abhijay attended the prestigious £18,000-a-year academically selective John Lyon school. So he’ll fit in well with his fellow selective education opponents at Momentum, James Schneider (Winchester) and Jon Lansman (Highgate). Not to mention the grammar school boys of the shadow cabinet. As the PPB asks, “what’s that if it’s not elitist?”

UPDATE: Abhijay justifies himself with a response on the facebook.com/fawkespage