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.

You seem to take yourself very seriously. (1) You are not propping up the country single handedly (2) 'Continuing to do what's right for your family. At exactly the time that's best for your family' is just what others quietly do for their family every day without needing to grandstand about it.

What you choose to do couldn't be more irrelevant to me. It's only your bitterness that is noteworthy.

Definitely not singlehandedly. Probably alongside about 7-10% of the working population...

Hmm, now there's an idea. Perhaps worth 'noting' how bitter Labour's vindictive policies have made that 7-10% of the population feel.

Yes, absolutely.
For many of us social contract is broken.
When you add pensions IHT in the pot it does feel like a coordinated attack on my DC. So I've taken drastic steps to ensure this government doesn't have my cash anymore.

I'm only a labour voter when my preferred party isn't an option. I'd say I'm broadly neutral about this. I think it's right that there is a tax on private education, but it doesn't bring in enough money for it to be a hill I'd die on. I'd rather have EU membership than VAT on private education.

I would also personally benefit from losing the tax on private education since I'm going to privately educate my sons, but that is not generally my main motivation when voting, I frequently vote against my own financial interests.

That falls woefully short of the existential issue it appears to be for some ....

Well I'm very firmly in the 7-10% and I don't feel any bitterness at all.

France and Germany struggling doesn’t prove the EU is the problem. It proves that being in the EU doesn’t protect you from Covid, energy shocks, inflation, madmen starting mad wars, high interest rates or weak global growth.

Their problems are mostly domestic and structural. Germany has an ageing population, expensive energy and a manufacturing model under pressure. France has high debt, high spending and weak growth. Leaving the EU wouldn’t fix any of that, and would almost certainly make some of it worse by adding trade barriers.

Equally, Brexit didn’t cause all of our problems. We’d still have been hit by the same global shocks.

But it did add an extra, quantifiable economic drag on top. The OBR’s estimate is that the UK economy will be around 4% smaller in the long run than it would have been inside the EU. Our money worries are harder outside the EU, than they would have been within it.

Would rejoining mean we can all afford olive oil and Vicks vaporub again?

No.

Would our economy be healthier and more productive by reducing barriers between us and a very large, very rich market immediately next door?

Yes.

No one is pretending rejoining will make our money worries go away. For me, closer alignment is about security. We are wildly exposed to Trump's mad tariff wars, and a world where peace is no longer the default state. The idea that we don't need allies and alliances is batshit to me. Mark Carney's Davos speech about the end of rules-based based order was compelling. If medium sized powers are not at the table, we're on the menu. And to be at the table, we need to work together, and that means working together, making compromises and getting over ourselves. Sovereignty is an illusion for a nation and economy our size. We will always have to jump to the tune of bigger economies and trading blocs. We took back control - and in order to export to the EU, we now need to jump through a million hoops while adhering to their regulatory standards, and make less money.

Great. Enjoy contributing ever more.

The EU has never looked weaker since trump ! He says "jump" and they do some posturing and hold their nose and whimper..."how high sir ".

Question, could you earn what you do without the lower paid workers?

Hmmm. Your second sentence is fair - but Trump has actually forced Europe to do things it's avoided for years, particularly when it comes to spending more on defence, coordinating security more seriously and reducing strategic dependence on the US. EU-NATO cooperation has intensified since 2025. In that regard, the EU is getting stronger BECAUSE of Trump, not weaker.

But if your argument is that the EU is too weak to stand up to America so there's no point joining/forming stronger alliances - what are we? The UK is WAY smaller than either the US or the EU and we are also seriously reliant on the US for things like defence, intelligence, technology and trade.

At least the EU has enough economic weight to retaliate and negotiate as a bloc. EU-US economic relationship is enormous: about €1.77 trillion of annual trade in goods and services and more than €4.8 trillion of mutual investment. Much more weight that we have on our own.

Trump has exposed a European weakness, not an EU weakness: Europe has outsourced too much of its security to America for decades. Britain did and still does. Brexit didn't change it.

Yep.

Really, so none of your colleagues, suppliers, clients are lower paid workers? Every single one of them is a in the top 7-10%

You manage to get to work without using any public transport or roads, they both rely on lower paid workers. You manage to source food that doesn't rely on lower paid people?

I'd love to know how you manage without the society around you

I'm not quite so sure about that. It may be the popular perception though.

None of us is an island, obviously.

The people whose work I depend on, in their turn depend on my work at least as much.

And that's before the different tax contributions are counted.

So no then, you couldn't do it without the lower paid workers in society.

Glad that's cleared up.

And they couldn't do their jobs without me (and others like me).

So what?

That's why we have money.

So that we all do something and are paid for it by the people who benefit... and in turn pay people for what they provide for us.

I feel sorry for you, genuinely.

You've been poisoned against your fellow human to the extent that you now despise everyone who disagrees with you on this topic, and by the sounds of it, others too.

If you had fully understood the impact of austerity on public services, on countless sick people who were denied life saving benefits, on disabled people whose lives became impossible.

If you had heard my best friend who is deaf and blind describe her despair at being unable to access any support, havong to rely on foodbanks to feed her daughter, stuck in a loop of bureaucracy.

Yes, I'm shroud waving a bit now. The decisions made by the previous government cost actual lives. I work in health, I can authoritatively tell you this.

So when the privileged came on here with this kind of anonymous vitriol, aimed at everyone in the 93%, including the 7% at the opposite end of the privilege spectrum, it didn't land well.

It didn't mean we would all die in a ditch over it. It was a different viewpoint. That's all. We didn't invent the policy.

I'm genuinely sorry that this one policy hurt you so much. I just can't prioritise your hurt over people like my friend who depends on the state. You don't, simple as that.

Sorry @EasternStandard that was in response to @strawberrybubblegum but it failed to attach to the right post.

X post will retract

You said that 7-10% of people propped up the economy. I was simply pointing out that you couldn't earn that without the lower paid rest of society

We prop each other up

Covid showed us pretty comprehensively who society depends on to keep running smoothly and it wasn’t the furloughed highly paid workers sitting in their gardens.

This popped up, and I thought of you(plural)

EU membership would not automatically abolish inheritance tax or require Britain to restore the old Agricultural Property Relief system. Taxation remains largely a national responsibility.

But rejoining would expose a fundamental contradiction in Labour’s policy.

Since Brexit, APR has been restricted to agricultural property in the UK. Before that change, the relief had been extended across the European Economic Area to comply with EU law.

If Britain reapplied for membership, Brussels would examine whether European and British farmers and investors were being treated equally and whether our tax system obstructed the free movement of capital.

Britain would also normally return to the Common Agricultural Policy, although the precise support arrangements and transition would be negotiated. The CAP is intended to sustain food production, rural communities and farming across generations.

That sits uneasily beside a tax policy forcing viable family farms to sell land simply to meet an inheritance-tax bill.

Labour would face a choice: defend a policy that accelerates consolidation and weakens food security, or design a system that protects genuine working farms while preventing abuse.

That could mean relief tied to active farming, continued agricultural use and clawback provisions when land is sold or developed.

Rejoining would not automatically repeal the farm tax but it would make its contradictions much harder to defend.

Food security, environmental protection and the survival of family farming must be treated as public goods and not collateral damage in a Treasury spreadsheet.