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I’ve always admired Diane Abbott, though admittedly only for one thing. Many years ago the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington campaigned against private schools. As a good socialist this comes as part of the ideological package, and Abbott was more than happy to join in the class war against parents who are in a position to educate their children outside the state system.
However, as some readers might remember, when it came to her own school choice Ms Abbott looked around the local state schools and decided that none of them was good enough for her own progeny. So she sent her son to the City of London School, a private school for boys. Confronted with this hypocrisy, Abbott did the sole thing that I admire her for. She admitted that the double–standard she had been caught in was indeed ‘indefensible’. She was a hypocrite. She admitted it and moved on.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Spectator (Paywall)
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Douglas Murray is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal.