The Tory candidate inside the Eastleigh byelection was struggling to preserve a reputable challenge for the Liberal Democrat stronghold after she suggested local state schools weren’t ok for her 12-year-old son, who has ambitions to become a surgeon.
The comments from Maria Hutchings, described by Lib Dems as a Sarah Palin figure for her trenchant views and tendency to chat off-message, provoked a storm of protest as political opponents and state-educated celebrities, said she had insulted state schools, including two local ones with glowing Ofsted reports.
Hutchings, who lives within the constituency and is looking for to overturn a three,800 Lib Dem majority following the resignation of the previous cabinet minister Chris Huhne, said on Friday her son was too clever for local state schools. “William is particularly gifted, which provides us another interesting challenge to find the correct style of education for him – impossible inside the state system. He desires to be a cardio-respiratory surgeon.”
The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said Hutchings had insulted “every pupil and teacher at our state schools, including those in Eastleigh. The concept that you cannot be a surgeon in case you visit a state school shows total ignorance of what a fine job such a lot of state schools are doing.” The Lib Dem leader of Eastleigh council, Keith House, said the daughter of Mike Thornton, his party’s candidate, had left a native state school and gone directly to study medicine at Imperial College, London.
Labour, whose candidate, John O’Farrell, is seen an intruder within the 28 February poll, sought yesterday to drive a wedge between the coalition parties over tax policy by calling on Lib Dems to support Miliband’s call last week for a mansion tax on homes worth over £2m. Miliband said his party would call a parliamentary vote within the following couple of weeks after which table an amendment to the Finance Bill that will deliver a mansion tax if the Lib Dems offered their support.
“Here’s a chance for Nick Clegg to prove he can keep a minimum of certainly one of his promises,” Miliband said.
Today on guardian.co.uk, Labour MP Geraint Davies, praising the plan to revive the 10p tax rate calls on Miliband to apply the by-election to flesh out the “one nation Labour” concept. “The risk is of reverting to the 1992 Labour brand, ie, all heart and no mind versus the Tory brand all mind with out a heart,” Davies writes.
