Hypocrites! How Corbyn gang all used top schools
LABOUR’S high command was accused of ‘despicable’ hypocrisy over grammar schools last night after it emerged that Jeremy Corbyn’s top team had all benefited from the education they provide.
Mr Corbyn and his party plan to oppose plans for new grammars in the Commons and seek to kill them off in the Lords.
His education spokesman Angela Rayner said Theresa May’s plan to open new grammars showed the Tories ‘care only for the few at the expense of the majority’.
Yet Mr Corbyn and his top team all either attended grammar schools themselves or their children did.
Mr Corbyn attended Adams’ Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire, leaving with two E grade A-levels. His son, Ben, also attended a grammar, Queen Elizabeth boys’ school in Barnet, North London. In the first Labour leadership contest last year, Mr Corbyn said he divorced his wife of 12 years in 1999 after she had refused to send Ben to a failing comprehensive school.
His hard- Left shadow chancellor John McDonnell went to Great Yarmouth Grammar School in Norfolk.
Shadow health secretary Diane Abbott was a pupil at Harrow County Grammar School for Girls, Middlesex.
Her son James went to the £13,000-a-year City of London School to study for GCSEs. For sixth form, he went to a £6,000a- year college in Ghana.
Leader of the Commons Paul Flynn went to Roman Catholic grammar school St Illtyd’s College in Cardiff.
Shadow business secretary Jon Trickett studied at Round- hay Grammar School (now Roundhay School) in Leeds while shadow local government secretary Grahame Morris went to Peterlee Grammar School in County Durham.
Mr Corbyn’s chief spin doctor, Seamus Milne, attended the private school Winchester College, Hampshire.
He sent his son to Tiffin School in Kingston upon Thames and his daughter to the nearby Tiffin Girls. They are rated among the best schools in the country.
Tory MP Nigel Evans said: ‘The Labour Party is stuffed to the rafters with people who have benefited from a grammar school education and who now wish to deny that form of education to young people. Everyone knows that grammar schools provide an excellent education and to block new grammars is going to deny perhaps the only opportunity that many young people living on sink estates have of getting an excellent education.
‘It is despicable they should use their privilege, born of a grammar school education, to deny other people the same.’
Labour took only minutes to attack the Prime Minister’s plans to revive grammars.
Miss Rayner said: ‘ It’s a policy which reveals the truth of this Tory Government: caring only for the few at the expense of the majority.’
Mr Corbyn also made plain his opposition to new grammars, saying: ‘I am in favour of young people being taught together of differing abilities.’