The row over the closure of two private schools, ostensibly partly due to Labour’s intention to levy VAT on fees, continues to resonate on our pages.

Read our report here 

Today, one of our readers argues that this betrays a totalitarian mindset.

Otto Inglis of Crossgates writes: "The imposition of VAT on private school fees which has already led to the closure of two Scottish private schools is not actually driven by envy but by something worse.

"Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is not, despite the rhetoric, a party of the working class, but a party of the public sector and especially of the Establishment. It is not envy that drives the well-paid and frequently well-connected MPs, not a few whom are "red princes" - the children of former leading MPs and leading Labour movement activists - but hatred of autonomy.

"In Labour’s view of the world everything must be within the state, nothing outside it and certainly nothing against it. That parents should be entitled to make choices of what is best for their own children independent of the state is anathema to Keir Starmer and his comrades.

"This is not just a struggle between parents who want the best for their children and a government wanting to raise more tax. It is actually a struggle between freedom and a totalitarian mindset."

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