Sun Labour Prep School Smear BUSTED

[Update at end of post]

Among the litany of abuse and invention directed at the Labour Party by the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun today is one particularly notable stand-out, even among the usual fresh and steaming piles of weapons grade bullpucky. This is the claim that shadow chancellor John McDonnell attended a “prep school”, which enables the obedient hacks to claim that he is a hypocrite.

John McDonnell wants YOU to know the Sun is shite

“£12k-year class warrior … Socialist John McDonnell branded a hypocrite as it emerges he went to £12,000-a-year prep school … Labour Shadow Chancellor has publicly called for private schools to be abolished, having hidden his own past posh links … SHADOW Chancellor John McDonnell spent two years at a £12,000-a-year prep school, The Sun can reveal … The die-hard socialist, who has publicly called for private schools to be abolished, attended posh St Joseph’s College in Ipswich in the late 1960s” is the story.

This sounds like an open and shut gotcha, but sadly for the inmates of the Baby Shard bunker, it is anything but. McDonnell has given a clue as to the reality in his response on Twitter: “Story on me in Sun untrue. I did not attend a prep school. I went to Grammar then for period to De La Salle college to prepare for priesthood … I returned to Grammar after I decided I did not have a vocation to catholic priesthood. My Dad was bus driver and Mum a shop worker”. And the idea he had fees paid for him gets short shrift.

“No way could they afford fees. They were proud I tried for the catholic priesthood & equally supportive when I returned to local school”. What is now St Joseoh’s College in Ipswich, a co-educational independent school open to those of all faiths, was in the 1960s a Catholic boarding school run by the La Salle Brothers.

McDonnell had gone to a state grammar school and would have had any fees paid by the Catholic church, had he been studying for the priesthood. The Sun’s hacks should know this - well, providing they have bothered to do a modicum of research, so maybe not.

Sun political editor Tom Newton Dunn - Marlborough College and Edinburgh

What is not told here - so I will - is the rank hypocrisy of the Murdoch goons. Heading the politics coverage on the Sun is the paper’s non-bullying political editor Tom Newton Dunn, who most certainly did have fees paid for him - to attend Marlborough College, from where he went up to Edinburgh University. John McDonnell, by comparison, had to study for his “A” levels at night school at a lowly technical college.

Flannelled fool Master Harry Cole - went to Tonbridge School (but only to do the drains)

And the last name on the by-line of the attack on McDonnell, the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, attended Tonbridge School, where the fees for boarders are higher than those charged by Eton College. He, like Newton Dunn, went up to Edinburgh University. They are the really posh ones - not the shadow chancellor.

Yes, a bunch of independently-schooled posh boys are sitting there in judgment on someone whose family couldn’t afford school fees, but they smear them anyway. It’s all part of the press establishment, sneering at the lower orders while they con their readers into thinking they’re men of the people. Once again - Don’t Buy The Sun.

[UPDATE 1825 hours: Master Cole's smear-site alma mater, the Guido Fawkes blog, has ridden to his rescue with a post trying to stand up the Sun's claims.

What The Great Guido fails to do is address the points that McDonnell did not have fees paid for his attendance, the school was a rather different institution to what it is today, and he only went there because of a later aborted move to train for the priesthood.

But the post does tell "McDonnell has form for blatantly lying". That's the Guido Fawkes blog, a smear site and borderline Fake News outlet, calling "lying" on others.

We are beyond irony here. Another fine mess]