This is my most left-wing opinion

I'm still a radical firebrand, on this one very specific issue!

POD! On YIMBY Pod this week, Martin and I get extremely mad about the delays to the Leeds Tram, and we speak to Andrew Greenway about his ideas for fixing the Civil Service so that it actually… works effectively. Listen here, or wherever you get your pods!

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As I get older, I can feel my political views becoming more boring and moderate.

The way I describe my politics now is that I used to think I was quite left-wing – then Jeremy Corbyn happened.

So over the years, I’ve become decidedly more milquetoast and centre-left-leaning.

I can see this when I look back. Though I never started out on the very, very far left – I was never an annoying Marxist as a student¹ – I was into plenty of far left cultural output. I grew up listening to punk bands who wanted to smash the state, and some of my favourite comedians were people like Marks Thomas and Steel.²

However, today, aged 38, my views have evolved, and as a balding adult with a mortgage, I’m more into reforming the state, and I now find a lot of people to my left quite annoying.

For example, when I see Zack Polanski making absurd spending commitments and unworkable promises, rather than find him inspiring, I just think it destroys his credibility. And when I see middle-class conspiracy theorists like Jolyon Maugham and Carol Cadwalladr promoting distrust in institutions, it makes me depressed.

So broadly speaking, today I’m much more of a shill for the centrist establishment than I was. My broad view of economic policy today is basically “economics is real but we should help poor people”, and on social policy it is “biology is real but no need to be an arsehole about it”.

And on foreign policy I’ve now made peace with the arms industry, and would very much like Ukraine to have access to all of the missiles and bombs they could ever need.

However, there is one area where I haven’t moderated.

Try as I might to chill out about the issue, I still find my blood boiling, and transform Hulk-like into a raving Marxist whenever I think about it.

And that issue is private schools.

So I thought that this week I’d write about why I haven’t moderated away from the position that really, private schools shouldn’t exist.