Can Sir Keir Starmer revive the Labour Party? (Vol. 2)

Noted that that you have much to say about people that take a different view to yours but very little of any substance to put forward an alternative view.

Just more sneering "Suck it up" bks.

Combing through an IFS report at 11pm on a Thursday night belies your prior assertion that you don't have a dog in the fight, wouldn't you agree?

As ever with you, the slipperiness is off the charts. In this case, it's deployed in two ways. One is to latch on to the IFS's observation that their data is limited (well duh, the vat exemption has been in place for over 50 years) and use that to characterise it heavily as guesswork & then later to rely on it to make the same point again. Your sins of omission are amusing too, Cherry picking lines from a report you've denigrated as guessing is classic bad faith. Great example here:

"Our best judgement is that it would be reasonable to assume that an effective VAT rate of 15% would lead to a 3–7% reduction in private school attendance. This would likely generate a need for about £100–300 million in extra school spending per year in the medium to long run."

Odd you should omit the last sentence, I can only assume you did so because it undermines the whole edifice of your own flowering, foundation free argument veering of into vague fluffery on social & economic impacts.

In the end, you're free to denigrate the IFS but it's typical of the right to do so. One observable manifestation of the populism wrecking this country is a freewheeling willingness to trash institutions. Doesn't matter who, judges, NHS, National Trust. the BBC, IFS, anyone contradicting the ideology is fair game. But if you're going to do it in this context, then it's for you to offer countervailing evidence which probably needs to be a little heftier than 'I'd stick it in my pension & claim tax relief'. And Tufton street stink tanks are a bad idea.

And floating above all of that is the reality that we're still talking about a complete non issue in the scheme of things. It's a tiny proportion of people affected, the electorate if it notices at all won't have it anywhere near their list of priorities & private schools remain an engine of discrimination,

Just 7% of children are privately educated but they make up 74% of judges, over 50% of print journalists, 80% of leading editors, 60% of senior civil servants, a majority of BAFTA winners. They act as a conveyor belt, creaming off the most sought after jobs to a tiny percentage of people, shutting out the majority who lack those disproportionately affluent advantages. That compunds negative outcomes for the majority & does it at a discount. It's wrong in principle that those schools should confer disproportionate benefit whilst accruing the tax benefits of charities.

Finland effectively abolished private education decades ago. It made the clearly correct assumption that, if the rich and powerful knew their own children were likely to attend state-maintained schools, they would be keen to ensure that such schools were well funded. Finland is among Europe’s most educationally successful countries. Therein lies a truism, you're either in society or you aren't. Perpetuating social division for personal advantage gives a clear answer where some stand.