Would Labour voters be upset if joining the EU meant they could no longer tax children’s education?

[Blarneyspoco]

Taxing children’s education is banned as part of EU membership. If the U.K. rejoined the EU, would Labour supporters be upset that they can no longer levy the tax or would it be seen as a necessary compromise.

Actually scrap that I agree with your other post.

Same here.

It’s entirely UNlikely that we would be able to rejoin with the same privileges/exceptions we had before.

If we rejoin would we have to ditch the pound and women’s rights?

I can see a LOT of remain voters not supporting a lesser membership than we had.

I doubt it too.

Didn't have time to finish my last post.

For many Conservatives and people in general . Sending their children to a Private School is a real Status Symbol.

This sorts the chavs out and well away from their children.

I don't think Labour is really interested in this issue. They did it as their latest gimmick and vote winner. To try and win working class voters back to the cause with the new Prime Minister. Saint Andrew of Makerfield.

Incidentally l don't and would not vote for any of the parties. Out for themselves, and their to serve their friends and the Elites

Back to the Conservatives. Ido remember my father telling me years ago. That when Thatcher was the Education Minister. She stopped free school milk. Which must have been a life line in the diet of some young school children.

Set her reputation as being very uncaring to say the least

But then children at Private School are unlikely to need free milk. Are they?

If you can afford to send your child to Private School. You should be able to pay the VAT. Stop bellyaching . Or just don't send them.

Simple.

@SemiRetiredLoveGoddeess
"If you can afford to send your child to Private School. You should be able to pay the VAT."
I'll say it again. Not all parents with kids in private school are rich. Some have below average income, some private schools are very much cheaper than you might expect and parents choose them for ideological reasons or because the state schools available to them aren't a good fit for their children. They sacrifice everything else so they can pay for their kids to get a good education and now they have to pay 20% more, no they can't easily afford it.

If you want to agree with VAT on private education that's up to you but please stop with the stereotypes. It isn't a rich v poor, them v us situation.

Why do you want to artificially make a good thing more expensive by 20% whilst doing nothing to actually raise money for state education

Private schools are not charities, they should not masquerade as them. Get religions next. They are fabulously wealthy institutions most of them. Confecting this with taxing education is proper hissy fit territory.

Here are some facts. They provide a measured perspective absent from your emotive outpouring. They also undermine your argument.

Around 100 state schools nationally have closed over the last 18 months because of the falling birthrate. During that period, the state sector has had to accommodate 30,000 former private school pupils. That's fewer than an average of one per school.

There are admission hotspots in some cities, including Bristol and Nottingham, where schools have no space capacity. In some London high-achieving achools, competition for entry has become more intense as a result of the VAT policy.

In summary, a long way from the carnage you imagination is feeding you.

Most of them are super expensive. Which ones aren't? 6,000 a term.

And then the trousers I know only put up prices and extra 6% - there is fat to trim. Sorry rich people you've had a long run of tax breaks, a little bit redress is not the end of the world.

The tax was levied to try and mitigate against shooting ourselves in the foot economically - otherwise known as leaving the EU.

So yeah. I'd take the opportunity to grow our whole economy over taxing private schools.

This is a very odd question.

I am not rich!

There are several private schools that cost less then the government spends per pupil on state schools. Some are religious, some have other philosophies. They run as charities and don't make any profit in order to keep the fees as low as possible.

Just because you haven't heard of them, doesn't mean they don't exist.

A few of them joined forces to issue a legal challenge when the government first announced the policy.

You suspect correctly.
Nothingburger here.

Which ones?

Rejoining the EU is far more important to me than a rise in costs (or not) for the parents of just 6% of children.

It came over so badly.

Right back at you.

No-one cared. No-one cares.

The many, many threads on VAT disprove that. The many, many comments from parents telling us they supported us being hit for £thousands... regardless of whether it actually brought any social benefit... regardless of the damage to some of our children.

Also the vindictiveness towards the state education system

Far, far more vindictiveness towards private school children. Posters revelling in 'little <comedy posh name>' having to go to a sink school because there are no spaces left at their own child's school and suffering there. And quite a few posters saying they deliberately never hire a private school kid.

Nastiness too, with all the insults about thick poshos - how stupid and awful our children are.

There have been a few divisive policies in recent years - like Brexit.

But this is more divisive, more corrosive. For those actually affected by this - just 7% (but a pretty high percentage of the tiny group who carry the UK financially) - this has had a huge affect on our relationship with the UK and with society.

I've seen that despite me happily funding the rest of the UK for most of my working life, they're not grateful for that: they're vindictive. They don't have my back if I need help in my turn: instead they will actively harm me and my family if they can. We're not on the same side, not part of a community. They actively want my child to have a worse life.

And it's brought in practically no money, and will probably go to negative tax income before it's repealed.

Such a fucking waste of UK cohesion and unity. Such a fucking stupid policy by incompetent, vindictiveness politicians.

Yep. The only saving grace is they’ve been ousted. Their vindictive, pointless policy will hopefully follow.

And what @Zzxzzzsaid.

These are all quite rival issues when as as look at this debate again.
It's a much bigger issue than queues at airports and freedom of movement .

It's about handing out power over ourselves to shady meps a long way away whom.we can't keep tabs on

Meps have been found with money from Putin /bribes. There is a massive black hole corruption is massive billions are lost.

Why would anyone want to hand our power to this massive burocratic mess.

Far far more important than any other tirite and selfish reason..

Can you give me an example which EU country you would like to grow ours like ? France ? Germany ?
It's just they are the biggest eccomomies. Do you think they are doing well and their people are happy ?

An EU member state can opt-out of EU legislation if they wish to, Major did that with the workers charter (a mistake in my opinion), personally I dislike the EU, it's modern day colonialism, rejoining would just make a mockery of the democratic vote to leave, in out, in out, the rest of the world would laugh, as mentioned, if people can afford to send their kiddies to public school, they can afford the VAT (or maybe ditch the Range Rovers if they can't !).......😋

By the same token I can see a lot doing so just to spite Brexiteers.

I can still remember Brexiteer after Brexiteer declaring they didn't are if leaving the EU left the UK worse off as "that's the price of sovereignty".

Rearrange these words to make a well known saying "Shoe, foot, is, the, other, on, now"

There’s certainly precedent for that as a decent amount of people voted Leave to spite Cameron/Conservatives/Government. (I haven’t forgiven him for not setting a super majority then treating the narrow result as if it was binding as it was an entirely avoidable mess that could have led to some introspection about our relationship with the EU without flushing it all away despite having no plan).

A lot of Labour voters were pro Brexit all along and as Corbyn had refused to endorse either side, he was suspected as a Leaver by many (not all his devotees, some of whom said he had a cunning plan but didn’t know what it was). This is a good account of his comments over decades https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-corbyns-changing-brexit-stance

The following 2017 general election featured a huge amount of publicly coordinated tactical voting of Remainers against Conservatives. When Corbyn then talked about Brexit he claimed the votes for Labour were part of votes for Leave.

It was a huge mess because Cameron failed to set clear boundaries and stick within them!

Labour voters are not united on this issue so Burnham’s plan will alienate some and reassure others. There are now a few pro-Brexit parties so he may be willing to lose voters to them with the chance of gaining Remainers. It’s a risk as some Labour-donating unions have been supporters of Brexit.

Other issues across Europe may be affecting votes more than Brexit/Rejoin now…but perhaps not.

"France and Germany have problems, therefore closer relations with the EU cannot be good for Britain.” is a false equivalence and weak arguing position.

EU membership or closer alignment doesn't require the UK to accept that becoming France or Germany is as good (and bad) as it gets and is what anyone should be aspiring to. The actual question to answer is, "Would the UK economy perform better with fewer barriers to trade, investment and movement with its largest neighbouring market than it's performing right now, with the barriers created by Brexit?"

The evidence suggests yes.

Since 2016 the UK economy has sat on a path around 5% below that implied by six comparable major EU economies. We can't prove that every percentage point is caused by Brexit, but alongside a fairly broad economic consensus that the post-Brexit increase in trade friction has reduced UK trade, investment and productivity relative to where they otherwise would have been - we are deffo economically worse off out, than in.

Also not sure why you think France and Germany are the countries we should aspire to - suspect you're just cherry picking countries with big problems right now and concluding that EU membership is the cause of those problems because that suits your world view. The single market contains quite different tax systems, welfare states, labour markets and industrial strategies.

You can't also say that people in France and Germany are unhappy therefore the EU is bad, when the EU also counts the happiest countries in Europe/the world as members - Denmark, Finland. Austria and Poland are also happy countries.

If you want me to pick a country to emulate, I'd say Denmark. Or even Spain, actually. Malta's doing well. We can cherry pick our arguments and data points until the cows come home though.

The UK had a non-standard role within the EU that allowed us to stay out of the Euro and veto lots of things we didn’t like. If we rejoin, I’d be surprised if it was on the same terms so we may have to ditch the pound and be signed up to everything the EU proscribes, without the voting influence we had.

The UK’s lack of cohesion is going to be a problem either way: how we behave towards each other when out of the EU and how we advocate for our/others’ needs if in the EU.

The ideology any government follows will be key to that. Starmer arrived and was expected to tax energy company profits but removed the winter fuel allowance. A PM can make or break their tenure depending on the ideology they manifest, or don’t.

Taxing private schools was an ideological decision that was taken despite the harm it would do to all those individuals/families. It’ll be interesting to see if that ideology continues with Burnham. That kind of populism is an unknown quantity.

We should definitely rejoin because then we will have cohesion and some people can start blaming the EU again (rather than immigrants or Palestine or private schools or old people or the feckless youth). Because one thing the English love to do is blame everyone else and find a scapegoat rather than take one long look in the mirror.