Labour Politicians Accused of Exploiting School Catchment System
Peter Hitchens, the longstanding Mail on Sunday columnist, has launched a scathing critique against Labour politicians, accusing them of purchasing expensive properties to secure places for their children at high-performing state schools while simultaneously demonising private education as a "sort of pestilence." Speaking on the latest episode of the Alas Vine & Hitchens podcast, Hitchens highlighted what he describes as a new form of "well-hidden privilege" within the British education system.
The North London Example
Hitchens cited a specific example involving a Labour "power couple" who reportedly bought a house worth millions of pounds in an exclusive North London neighbourhood. "The catchment area of a certain girls school in North London is so small that if you want to buy a house there, it's going to cost you millions of pounds," Hitchens explained. While he declined to name the couple, citing an inability to prove intent, he claimed their daughter subsequently gained admission to Oxford University and launched a successful career.
"They got their daughter into Oxford and all the rest of it, and launched her on the sort of career she would have had if she'd gone to a private school," Hitchens stated, "only without any of those disadvantages that now fall on the heads of privately educated boys and girls who are considered to be sort of pestilence."
Contrast with Public Rhetoric
This accusation comes despite Labour's public emphasis on state education. Much has been made of the fact that 92 percent of Sir Keir Starmer's 2024 Labour cabinet attended comprehensive schools, making it the most state-educated cabinet in modern British political history. Furthermore, in February, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson introduced a white paper aimed at restructuring school admissions to prevent parents from being "priced out of going to their local school."
However, Hitchens argues that such policies overlook a deeper issue. "Alan Milburn and his social mobility campaigns and Ofsted have constantly fed the idea into the employment market that if you discriminate against privately educated appeals, you're helping the poor," he said. "On the contrary, the new form of privilege which exists in this country has nothing to do with private schools, everything to do with well-hidden privilege."
Widespread Practice Among the "Left-Wing Elite"
Hitchens suggested this practice is not isolated. "Left-wingers actually love privilege, provided it's only for them," he asserted, claiming there are "several schools in London" known for their high standards, which are "effectively highly selective, though technically comprehensive." Some are religious schools, while others are not, but they are allegedly "full of the children of the left-wing elite who then progress to Oxford and Cambridge."
He described this as a "hugely endemic problem" affecting the middle class, education system, civil service, and professions across the country. "This is, this is hugely endemic problem in our middle class and our education system, the civil service and professions everywhere," Hitchens concluded.
Historical Parallel: Disguised Privilege in Soviet Moscow
To illustrate his concept of "disguised privilege," Hitchens shared an anecdote from his time as a foreign correspondent in Moscow between June 1990 and October 1992. He recounted living in a superior flat on the 11th floor of a building constructed by German prisoners of war, which was occupied by KGB members and families of Soviet leaders like Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov.
"Fourteen foot ceilings, chandeliers, Moscow in both directions, over the river on one side and from the university down to the Kremlin on the other," he recalled. "It was actually one of the nicest places I've ever lived." Despite the appearance of equality, with even vodka rations, the flat represented hidden elite access.
Hitchens also described driving past the Kremlin clinic, a hospital "the size of a general hospital in a major British city" reserved exclusively for Communist Party Central Committee members, surrounded by a 15-foot stone wall and trees to conceal it from public view. This, he argued, mirrors the discreet privilege exercised by some in Britain today through strategic property purchases for educational advantage.
The full discussion on middle-class parents gaming the state school system can be heard on the Alas Vine and Hitchens podcast, available on major platforms including Apple and Spotify.
