Education, education… vacation? If you’re Gillian Keegan, it’s one or the other

Does a private school education cost less than a family holiday? Tom Peck reflects on the education secretary’s numeracy skills

‘Most of our private schools aren’t like Eton or Harrow,’ she said. ‘They’re far smaller and they charge a lot less’ (PA)

It is at this stage entirely impossible to tell if there is anyone in the Conservative Party still holding out any hope or even desire of winning the next general election. Trying to interrogate the things they say and do is like analysing the swimming skills of a fish on land. They writhe about, they leap up, in desperate cries if not for help then just for attention. But they know it’s pointless.

Does education secretary Gillian Keegan – the fifth holder of that role in the last 12 months – care about what might be the likely response to her suggestion that, actually, a private school education costs less than a family holiday?

She made that claim in the House of Commons, while attacking Labour’s plans to charge VAT on private schools. It is, inevitably, a crowded field, but it remains at least a possibility that no one, not even in these last mad years, has said anything in that little oak-panelled room that is capable of bearing less scrutiny.