It was mad to end free school lunches

The blow suffered by Theresa May in this election is widely seen as the revenge of “politicised youth” and the “outraged elderly”, says Alice Thomson. Not so. Polling evidence suggests it was more a middle-aged rebellion: among the 30- to 45-year-old age group, Labour was a “staggering” 35% ahead. And the policy that really angered this group – the most unpopular of the big Tory manifesto pledges, according to Yougov – was the plan to cancel free school lunches. Just 12% of voters supported it, and you can see why. The scheme, introduced in 2014, had been “a rare post-recession success story”. Pupils in the first three years of primary school, who before had often got by on snacks, could now get a healthy meal for free (albeit at an annual cost to the taxpayer of £437 per pupil). Seeing this, parents of older children increasingly opted to pay for such meals rather than making them packed lunches. How mad of the Tories to substitute this popular scheme with a plan for free breakfasts that would not only have meant the closure of school kitchens, but wouldn’t even have saved much money. We must hope they’ve now dropped the whole idea.