It’s been a huge honour and privilege to serve Woking and all its residents as your Member of Parliament these past 14 years. I wish our new Government well and I also wish Will Forster every success over the coming years as our new MP.

Thx a lot @joshbrownuk @JonathanLord for your continuous support. Our fight for justice is still ongoing and will definitely get full justice soon for everyone 🙏

1️⃣It is not a tax break. 2️⃣It will place greater pressure on the state sector. 3️⃣It will result in smaller private schools closing. 4️⃣It will result in fewer scholarships & bursaries. 5️⃣It will result in less community outreach & engagement. ➡️Widening the educational gap.

ANDREW NEIL: Schools minister's naked class envy will wreck Britain mol.im/a/14233895 via @MailOnline

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37,000 middle income children x £7500 per year to educate in the state system = £277,500,000 cost to taxpayers plus the LA’s having to pay for their transport to and from schools further away in a lot of cases because local schools are full up. Mind numbing incompetence and economic illiteracy

The government’s anti growth policies will hit hard in 2025. Expect more closures of car and steel plants, private schools, family farms, shops and care homes, fewer Landlords renting homes and faster decline of the oil and gas industry. Why do this?

Britain’s hapless Bridget Phillipson is on her way to becoming the worst education secretary this country has ever seen. Here’s what she’s done in only five months: -Dumped free speech protections for universities -Paused funding for successful free schools -Advocated flexible “working from home” for teachers (true idiocy) -Watered down academic attainment as a core metric -Put curriculum review in hands of a Diversity-obsessed woke Professor -Scrapped funding for Latin -Refused to speak positively about high-performing Michaela school -Further eroding high standards by imposing tax hikes on private schools What do you see in all this? A Labour education secretary doing the very opposite of what everybody in education should be doing Instead of putting evidence ahead of ideological dogma she is putting ideological dogma ahead of evidence Instead of raising standards, aspiration and expectations she is actively lowering them And it’s the most important people of all who will suffer: our children.

Other major new Govt spending is via Ed Miliband: unlikely to help UK growth - indeed, his plans as a whole likely to be a drag anchor (eg. killing UK oil and gas; even higher energy costs for consumers & businesses). Plus more £billions going overseas (inc. Ed’s promises). 2/2.

So right, Steve. First, Labour promised (ad nauseam!) re all plans “fully costed”. If so, no need for big tax rises/big new borrowing/cuts. Some additional spending was on generous public sector/train driver pay awards (with little/no productivity promises in return). 1/2.

Labour government in action... • Inflation UP • Unemployment UP • Growth GONE!

Rachel from Accounts pledged to make the UK the fastest-growing economy in the G7, discovered when she arrived at the Treasury that it actually already was the fastest-growing economy in the G7. And then she crashed it with doom-talk and a tax-squeeze budget. 🤦‍♂️

Economic revival won’t happen overnight, says Starmer as growth stalls - The Times and The Sunday Times- Economic revival was happening until this new government , now this anti growth administration has destroyed any prospect of growth stocks.apple.com/AZ7CmD3QcTO…

In 2025 & 2028 we get to mark Labour’s work in the PISA ranks. What surprises me is the immediacy of impact in education outcomes. I work in finance so it is interesting to see how policy leads to impact.

Yes, people keep saying 14 years this, 14 years that, but half of that time was spent either in coalition with the Lib Dems or the opposition faffing about calling all the shots trying to defy the EU referendum result.

From 2010-2019, the @Conservatives pushed through with one of the most ambitious, aspirational and radical reforms to schools. It took them years. They never had a majority. Resistance from Labour and the unions was relentless Labour are undoing all this work in 6 months 🧵⬇️

I can't think of anything that the Starmer government has done to education that a Corbyn government wouldn't have done, a far-left agenda motivated by a mixture of spite and sentimentality and bound, in the long-run, to undermine economic productivity. Hopeless

The Treasury has admitted that it didn’t do basic costings for the Inheritance Tax on family businesses and family farms. Great work by @StuartMaggs to debunk the government’s false figures. order-order.com/2024/12/23/t…

It is worrying

All entirely self-inflicted