Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Shami Charkrabarti goes to Eton



The latest episode in the slide in Shami Charkrabarti's reputation came on Newsnight yesterday evening when Michael Crick put it to her that she had tried to get her son into Eton.

Her non-denial denial - she just said Crick had "spent too long reading the internet" or something like that - suggests the charge is true.

The story turns out to come from Heat Street a month ago:
A source has told us: "I took my son to Eton to sit the entrance exam a couple of summers ago and was very surprised to soo Shami Charkrabarti there accompanying her son. There is no question it was her. I had assumed Shami was so Left-Wing that Eton was possibly the most offensive four-letter word known to her, but obviously I was wrong."
Heat Street has tried to contact card-carrying Labour member and Corbyn ally Chakrabarti on several occasions to discuss this but she either isn't available or won't return calls.
I had assumed that Charkrabarti was a liberal, which makes her embrace of Corbyn and the regressive left all the sadder.

And she is, of course, free to send her son to school where she likes. It's just that politicians who urge egalitarianism on the voters without practising it themselves are always going to be problematic - see my recent post on the grammar school debate.

What this story reminds me of is one of the SWP activists at York when I was a student there. He was never seen without his donkey jacket and cut quite a figure at student union meetings.

Then someone recalled he had seen him in a suit and tie when they had been trying to get into the same Oxbridge college. We saw him differently after that,

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Charkrabarti still is a Liberal - that why she backs a man who support peace, nuclear disarmament, the redistribution of wealth and free education. I remember when the Liberal Democrats used to believe in these things too.

Anonymous said...

Does that redistribution of wealth extend to Chakrabrati's husband Martyn Hopper whose annual earnings as a City lawyer exceed £1.3m?