See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy DAILY MAIL COMMENT Published: 01:00 BST, 28 June 2026 | Updated: 01:03 BST, 28 June 2026
The recent Commons clash between Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and Labour Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson is a good sign, and will help to illuminate and galvanise the national debate.A key division between Labour and Tory parties was opened up and explained. British politics, in that moment, became more enlightening and more gripping. Nobody was hurt in the exchange. Both these highly intelligent, strong women are quite tough enough to take it.There may be those on the Left who will now accuse us of playing the woman rather than the policy by widening the issue – as we do today – by noting the contrast between Ms Phillipson’s personal experience of council house sales, and her party’s new policy on the subject. But Ms Phillipson, we suspect, can look after herself and needs no coddling. Here is what is really going on: Mrs Badenoch relishes battle and is on the march, and the Labour Party very much do not like it.In fact, they dislike it so much that the Labour spin machine has done what it can to deter the Opposition leader from repeating her jibe that Ms Phillipson is a spiteful class warrior.If the Tory High Command have any sense, this will only encourage them to keep up the bombardment. Thanks to the Makerfield by-election, the Tories are back in the fight. Meanwhile, the Education Secretary is an unusually frank politician of the modern Left. She has risen from humble origins, through talent, determination and grit.But rather than seeking an open society in which it is easier for others to do the same, she has adopted the dogma of resentment, which led to her educationally futile and damaging imposition of VAT on independent schools. Kemi Badenoch (R) called Bridget Phillipson (L) a 'spiteful class warrior' (pictured on Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg) Here is what is really going on: Mrs Badenoch relishes battle and is on the march, and the Labour Party very much do not like itThis only hurts those who can least afford to pay fees. Not everyone has a good state school near them, as Ms Phillipson did.But in one way, the experience of Ms Phillipson, and of those who go without to pay private fees, is similar.Parents in all parts of society put good education first. They make sacrifices of various kinds to obtain it. Many families with very little money scrape together what they can to pay for modest, unflashy private schools. Surely anyone who really cares about schooling should sympathise with all those who do the same, by whatever method.And now we see that the ambitious Education Secretary, who recently fought to become Labour’s deputy leader, has once again drawn the wrong conclusions from experience.Her mother, long ago, saw the sense in exercising the right to buy her modest council house. In February 1990, Clare Phillipson bought the property from Sunderland City Council for just £9,600, thanks to a sitting tenant’s discount of £5,890. And thanks to this wise investment, she was able to sell for £99,950 in May 2023.But Ms Phillipson now sits in a government which says council tenants must wait far longer, and pay far more, if they want to do what her own mother did back in 1990.How can she square these two facts? Let us hope Kemi Badenoch soon tries to make her do so.
