I don’t hate Labour. Really I don’t. When a Labour politician makes a sound and reasonable choice, based on facts, I promise I’ll be the first to praise them for doing so. Scout’s honour.

What I do think is sad is when people are doggedly tribal just because they belong to a particular political party. Such narrow-mindedness is harmful.

It means that you fail to open your mind enough to see what could work for the betterment of the country, so stuck you are to your cult-like tenets. So that’s why I think what education secretary Bridget Phillpson is currently up to is so awful it’s actually heartbreaking.

Although I went to state secondary school – the same one as my two children – I was horrified to read about her inflicting VAT on private schools.

In her mind they’re not about hard working parents, often making huge sacrifices in their everyday lives to prioritise their children’s education.

Instead her decision was based on her deluded ideology that private school kids are all mini members of the Bullingdon Club, running around in top hats whilst their parents whip people as they work, from the backs of polo horses and simultaneously swig Champagne. It’s mental.

As much as she swore this was about finding more funding for the state sector, this has been widely disputed as it’s predicted tens of thousands of children will be forced to leave private education and head for their local comp, likely quickly swallowing up any gains and proving her choice was wholly ideological.

This was shown to shocking effect when she took to X with a hugely misjudged and desperately ill-informed ramble taking aim at the private sector, saying “our children” need teachers over “embossed stationery”. So much for her looking out for all children.

Well let me tell you what she’s done now. Her deeply entrenched prejudice against aspiration and parental choices, is now not just affecting children who attend private schools but also some of the most deprived children in society.

As a former deputy mayor of Middlesbrough I can remember reading that Eton – perhaps the world’s most famous and highly regarded private school – was teaming up with Star Academies – an acclaimed trust operating in the state sector – to create three sixth forms aimed at giving children from challenged backgrounds the best chance at securing top A-Level results and heading off to Oxbridge.

I immediately thought Middlesbrough would be the perfect fit and we approached the team responsible who’d had the same thought.

The headteacher and the team behind the vision visited our town, we showed them around, they liaised with other colleges and the stars all aligned in what was going to be a truly transformational project.

We have the talented children – and this amazing new campus was finally going to give them the opportunities they deserved. More than that it would be great for the town as a whole too, creating sought-after jobs and becoming a beacon of excellence in the middle of the struggling centre itself, boosting all around it.

The Eton Star establishment would also force all other sixth forms to up their game too, as does any healthy competition. Did I mention that as well as expertise Eton would be investing £1m of its own cash into the scheme?

Everyone who learned about it was excited – except that is for the Middlesbrough MP Andy McDonald and his band of daft councillors who just couldn’t grasp why it was a crucial step forward.

So I really shouldn’t have been surprised when just over a week ago Phillipson revealed that she could axe the whole scheme, saying that the three colleges which were several years into the planning stages in Middlesbrough, Dudley and Oldham would be “paused” whilst a review takes place.

I pray there’s still a glimmer of hope, but with Phillipson at the helm I feel less and less optimistic.

This woman is a career politician. She has lived and breathed the party’s dogmatic far left creed for years and never lived in the real world long enough to have her cultish beliefs properly tested.

Shame on her. But this cruel decision spreads much wider than education as it strikes at the heart of all that’s wrong about this current crop of socialists running the country. They’re anti aspiration, anti ambition and anti hope.

She holds the same dangerous politics of envy which stoked Rachel Reeves’s budget which targeted the prudent savers, the house buyers and the farmers. And it’s the same class-obsessed philosophies that have Keir Starmer constantly grappling to define exactly who his government is focused on helping.

Well I definitely can help him out. Put simply, if you value hard work and want to get on, then this is simply not the Government for you. And that should worry everyone.