#HT25

On July 5th 2024, Labour took office with a mandate to apply Value Added Tax (VAT) at the standard rate of 20% on private school fees, and to revoke the charitable business rates relief currently enjoyed by England’s fee-paying schools . Since then, this policy has faced a more sustained and intense wave of opposition in the media than perhaps any other proposal in the party’s platform. Despite opinion polls indicating that the plan has garnered widespread public support, outlets like the Daily Mail continue to insist that a ‘class war’ is somehow being waged by the government.

During every single day of the Trump administration, I will very simply put America first” declared the 45th and now 47th President, standing in the same Capitol rotunda that his supporters rampaged through four years ago. The President’s triumphant resurgence – winning the popular vote, all seven swing states, and a governing trifecta – represents a total usurpation of the former, liberal world order. Biden’s presidency will now be seen by history as an interlude, a brief intermission in the Trump story, not the grand liberal revival many hoped for in 2020.

Modern Britain prides itself on placing ordinary, working-class people at the forefront of society since its adoption of a meritocratic social agenda in the late 20th century. It would be ignorant to dismiss the rapid social progression that has followed. However, the popularisation of inclusivity initiatives has uncovered numerous shortfalls, creating an invisible working class.

We appear to live in an age of media games, of rhetoric, of the sound bite and the one-liner. An age of Brexit, of Boris and of a Britain that everyone seems to agree isn’t going so well. An age of identity politics, the Ben Shapiro’s, the TikTok debates, and of Elon musk buying twitter in the name of “free speech”. Through all this, I wonder, have we lost the point?