Bridget Phillipson has just become Britain's biggest class dunce with 1 brainless decision

As a Conservative politician - even a local one like me - it's tempting to fall into a lazy trap of slamming Labour with tired insults. You know the ones: accusing them of a politics of envy, of being at war with aspiration and indulging in student union socialism. Sadly, however, my latest fight with the Labour lot is a shameful embodiment of all three of those tropes. What's that saying? Cliches are cliches for a reason...

Let's wind the clock back a few years to when Eton proposed three new sixth form colleges - state schools - in the Midlands and the North. The idea behind them was to work with the acclaimed free school chain, Star Academies, to help children from deprived backgrounds achieve cracking A-level results and get them into the top universities.

As a Middlesbrough councillor and then deputy mayor, I can vividly remember reading about this with keen interest. We approached the team to tell them about what a perfect fit a new Eton college would be for our town. Our children perform well at GCSE level, but that isn't translating into the A-Level results required to secure places at Oxbridge and similar institutions. And the stars aligned, because they agreed!

Who on Earth could argue against such a brilliant scheme rooted in equality of opportunity? A no-brainer, surely? Unless, that is, your name is Bridget Phillipson. You know - the woman who in her own campaign for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, bragged about being from a working-class background and making it to the top as Education Secretary, with an Oxford education to boot. Talk about pulling up the drawbridge.

When Labour was elected, she made the decision to put a whole wave of free schools on hold, placing the entire Eton project - which also plans to open sixth forms in Dudley and Oldham - into limbo. What's so depressing about this is that you'd hope these are the very children that Labour wants to give a step up. But rather than look at the evidence - such as the type of education that Eton is world-renowned for providing and the results that Star Academies has in areas like mine - they've heard the word 'Eton' and lost the plot.

To them, Eton doesn't stand for academic brilliance but ridiculous stereotypes such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, princes playing polo and Boris Johnson quaffing Champagne with Bullingdon Club pals. But as a woman who seems like she's on a personal mission to shut down the UK's private schools for little other reason than her socialist training tells her she should, this project 'pause' shouldn't come as any shock.

My plea to her is simple: stop treating aspiration like it's a dirty word. Don't punish bright children from working-class backgrounds just because they don't fit your worldview. Do the right thing and back this incredible project. We won't forget it if you don't.