Mieka Smiles

Local Matters

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SA CONSERVATIVE politician — even a local one - it’s often tempting to fall into a lazy trap of slamming Labour with tired insults.

You know the ones: accusing them of a politics of envy, of being at war with aspiration and indulging in student union socialism. Sadly, however, my latest fight with the Labour lot is a shameful embodiment of all three of those tropes. What’s that saying? Cliches are cliches for a reason...

Let’s wind the clock back a few years to when Eton proposed three new state sixth-form colleges in the Midlands and the North. The idea was to work with the acclaimed free school chain, Star Academies, to help children from deprived backgrounds achieve cracking A-level results and get them into the top universities. As a Middlesbrough councillor and then deputy mayor, I read about this with keen interest.