She took drink, May takes food

I’ve always maintained it would be hard, even impossible, for modern-day Tory governments to exceed the pain and harm caused by Margaret Thatcher. But this week’s revelations by the Institute for Fiscal Studies about free school meals made me pause for thought.

Mrs Thatcher, after all, only took children’s milk. But the ongoing rollout of Universal Credit will now see 160,000 children – one in eight who received the handout through the old system – literally seeing their hot lunchtime meal snatched from them.

As the Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner points out, the Tories lied again and again that no child would lose a hot meal under their plans. Ministers and civil servants should not sleep until they have worked out a way to make sure that does not happen under the Universal Credit system. MILK SNATCHER Margaret Thatcher