Yesterday I visited Luckley House School, to the south of Wokingham.

The Head and Bursar wanted to review the issues surrounding tax and money for a fee paying school. I reassured them that I support charitable status for schools, and do not propose placing VAT on school fees. Private sector schools face large rate bills for their properties, and substantial tax on employing people, in addition to the taxes paid by their employees. There are limits to how much additional tax many private schools could afford.

The state is a double  beneficiary of fee paying schools. It collects these taxes on the schools and their employees, and saves the money on providing places for the young people themselves in state financed schools. It would not be easy finding the extra  money and providing the places necessary were some future government to ban private schools or tax them out of existence.

The main argument behind policy suggestions to tax them more is that parents who can afford fees for their children’s education are buying privilege. The best answer to this criticism is to make sure the standards at all state schools are good so there is no great educational advantage out of going to a fee paying school.

In order to earn and maintain charitable status these days some think a fee paying school has to do more than offer a good education to the children of those who can pay. Private schools are encouraged to provide access funds or scholarships, so children from lower income backgrounds can attend. Schools often provide sporting and cultural facilities that are available for community use as well as school use.  They may invite in pupils from state schools for various events and lectures they are organising, share their sporting facilities or otherwise  make a contribution to better and wider ranging education elsewhere in the area.

I toured Luckley House School which has some good facilities, and wish it well for the future. The theatre at Luckley is particularly good and available for others to hire for their events.

Mr Barnier has warned Conservative leadership hopefuls there will be no re opening of the Withdrawal Treaty. He says the choice is sign that Treaty or leave without it.

It confirms my  view that MPs should not vote for leadership candidates who offer a renegotiation to seek an amended and less damaging version of the Withdrawal Treaty whilst ruling out or disliking  simply leaving. The EU has said they would be wasting their time. They need to re think their prospectus to MPs.

Several of the long list of possible candidates are struggling to get 8 MPs to support their Nomination as now required, so there is likely to be a shorter list of candidates following close of Nominations on Monday.

Yesterday Mrs May’s tenure as Leader of the Conservative party ended, though she remains as acting leader and Prime Minister until her successor is appointed. As her neighbour and friend I have sought to help her and give her positive  advice in office. I wish her a good future however she wishes to develop her life as she stands down from the biggest political job in the country. She has given a lot of energy and determination to the job of PM, and has a strong sense of public service and duty.

Her tenure as Home Secretary from 2010 to 2016 was long lived, demonstrating her ability to avoid some of the pitfalls of life in the Home Office that had tripped up previous Home Secretaries who lasted for shorter periods of time there. The main promise she made that was an important part of the Conservative 2010 Manifesto was the promise to cut net migration from the high levels of the later Labour years to 100,000 or below, still double the typical figure under John Major. She never got anywhere near hitting this target. She stuck with it, recognising the importance of it to some Conservative voters. Her efforts to do so were hampered by membership of the EU at a time when freedom of movement rules required us to welcome a large number of migrants from eastern Europe. She did not, however, manage to control non EU migration as promised either. She did good work on highlighting and curbing modern slavery and on opposing discrimination against people on  grounds of race and sex.

In 2016 after Mr Cameron’s resignation she won the leadership when the second placed candidate from the MP ballot decided not to pursue her challenge through a ballot of the wider party membership. She commanded a clear majority of the MPs. Her tenure as PM began well, with all the party including  those of us who had not voted for her willing her to succeed. With Nick Timothy as her adviser she listened to those of us who had backed Leave. We worked together well to craft the legal framework needed to get us out of the EU. This successful collaboration saw the government pass the EU Withdrawal Notification Act to send the letter of notice to the EU with big  majorities. We went on to help her get through the EU Withdrawal Act itself, to take us out in UK law. Though we faced a united opposition from all other parties in the Commons apart from the DUP, and although there were some rebel Remain Conservatives, the co-operation worked and the government carried the Bill.

As soon as the Bill was passed Mrs May ceased co-operating with the large Leave group of Conservatives and adopted in secret what became the Chequers plan. She made a series of damaging concessions to the EU in the negotiations and trusted a few politicians and civil service advisers who shared her view that the UK needed a comprehensive partnership with the EU after leaving, and needed to accept a very disadvantageous Withdrawal Treaty. This entailed breaking the Manifesto promise to negotiate any withdrawal issues in parallel with the future relationship.

I and others urged her not to adopt or to pursue the Chequers proposals, and not to attempt to agree or put through the draft Withdrawal Treaty. At crucial moments we urged her to refuse more concessions to the EU and to make more demands for the UK, but she did not want to. As we warned her, the draft treaty went down to a calamitous huge defeat. She also suffered an unprecedented run of Ministerial resignations over the same single policy. Instead of heeding the warnings and telling the EU the draft Treaty was unacceptable she spent her last months in a futile series of attempts to get it through the Commons. When she decided to delay our exit and fight the European elections she reached the tipping point where a majority of the Parliamentary Conservative party no longer had confidence in her approach and she had to resign. More importantly she lost the confidence of a large section of the Leave voting electorate, with dire consequences for the Conservative party in recent  elections.

Tomorrow I will look at other parts of her legacy.

On Tuesday at 6pm I will be talking about the main themes from “We don’t believe you”, my latest book. I will bring the book up to date for the European elections and the Peterborough by election. I have been busy updating the text for the next printing to include this latest news.

The IEA still has a few tickets left if you wish to come. They are at 2 Lord North Street London SW1  on 0207 799 3745.

The decision of Ford to cease engine production at Bridgend is sad, but part of their long term retreat from manufacture in the UK. Their market share has shrunk dramatically from the high levels in the 1960s and 1970s . It is also part of the story of loss of sales and big financial losses in Europe as a whole. Just like Honda they have found it difficult to stay sufficiently competitive.

The immediate background to the closures both here and in Germany is the sharp decline in the world car market over the last year. In part this is the result of monetary squeezes here and  on the continent. In part it is the result of the savage increase in VED taxes in the UK in 2017 with the limits on car loans, the increase in Chinese car sales taxes, and the rising interest rates in the USA. There is a world car downturn based on more tax and less credit.

The other big change is the sudden shift of the Uk and EU governments against diesel cars and their insistence that people buy electric vehicles. The public have not warmed to these electric vehicles and the industry is still struggling to produce ones that are good value, with a big range and fast recharging. The public has held off from buying, as in many other countries told to go in the same direction. China has made faster progress with electric vehicles.

It is strange to watch the UK and other governments do this much damage to their car industry. It would be more normal to give the industry more time to develop new products with electric propulsion, and to make sure there are products people want to buy. In the meantime to avoid more closures in the UK as a matter of urgency the government should cut its tax rates on new cars, and  loosen new car  loans availability.