Keir’s NO to non-public well being reveals the cold-blooded Socialist he’s

By far the most revealing moment of this week’s election debate, in my book, had nothing to do with the row over tax or the two leaders’ competing efforts to bribe us with imaginary money.

No, that moment came for me when the debate’s moderator, Julie Etchingham, asked them both: ‘If you had loved ones on a long waiting list for surgery, would you, if you felt that was the only way forward, use private healthcare?’

Without a second’s hesitation, Rishi Sunak gave the one-word answer: ‘Yes.’

Good for him, I thought. Though the truth of what he said will not have surprised anyone, it’s not often that politicians are monosyllabically honest — and particularly not during an election campaign.

Then it was Sir Keir’s turn, and for once in his life he was equally clear and emphatic.

‘No,’ he said — and a sea of red blood and blue water opened up between himself and the Prime Minister.

Ms Etchingham gave him the chance to reconsider, asking: ‘Absolutely no, if your loved ones were on a waiting list for surgery?’

The Labour leader repeated: ‘No. I don’t use private health. I use the NHS.’

In other words, Sir Keir was telling us he would rather let his nearest and dearest suffer prolonged pain or even die than tarnish his socialist conscience by shelling out to secure for them the private treatment he could well afford.

Wasn’t this about the most chilling, creepy and unnatural pronouncement you’ve heard from a political leader in a very long time? I’d call it downright inhuman.

Of course, one possibility is that he was just lying, either to avoid a row with the extreme Left of his party or in the strange belief that his socialist zealotry would endear him to the electorate at large.

After all, this would hardly have been the first time he’d said whatever he thought might please his audience, whether or not he actually believed what he was saying.

Think of all those promises he made to his party activists when he was standing for the leadership, only to break them almost as soon as he’d won.

But did he really believe the wider electorate watching Tuesday’s debate would warm to him, telling themselves: ‘Hurray for Sir Keir! He may be a millionaire, probably several times over. But he’d rather let his kids suffer than dig into his pockets to alleviate their agony. He gets my vote!’

Perhaps there are a few rabid Corbynistas who think like that. But if we were as well off as the Labour leader, wouldn’t most of us do anything we could afford to ease the pain of those we love — even if that meant giving them an advantage over others?

No, I don’t think he was being dishonest this time. I reckon this was one of those rare occasions when he has let his centrist mask slip, giving us a glimpse of the cold-blooded socialist ideologue who’ll be waltzing into Downing Street on July 5 if the polls prove right.

Indeed, this former Corbyn champion and fervent anti-monarchist has been uncharacteristically consistent in suggesting it’s wrong to pay for medical treatment — except, of course, through general taxation.

Go back two years, in the course of which he has merrily jettisoned one promise after another, to a BBC interview in which he described a conversation in an intensive care unit with his dying mother, a former nurse and a ‘passionate defender of the NHS’.

‘It was touch and go,’ he said. ‘She just held my hand and said: ‘You won’t let your dad go private, will you?’

I don’t know how Sir Keir answered her question — and I’m not even quite sure what she was trying to say. But if his assertion in Tuesday’s debate is any guide, he will have said something along the lines of: ‘Don’t you worry, Mum. I’ll never have anything to do with private healthcare, no matter who might benefit.’

Never mind that rich people who go private ease the pressure on the NHS — a point made memorably by Margaret Thatcher — while those who insist on using the service, even when they don’t need to, just lengthen the queues for everyone else. In the Labour leader’s view, apparently, it is better that everyone should suffer equally than that a privileged minority should be spared.

Indeed, you can see much the same philosophy behind his determination to impose VAT on school fees — a policy on which he has also displayed remarkable consistency. This would make Britain one of only a tiny handful of countries to tax education.

He must surely know, as well as you and I, that he’s talking total ‘garbage’ (one of his favourite words) when he insists the VAT charge will raise an average of more than £1.7 billion a year.

This is because the figure takes wholly inadequate account of the number of poorer parents who will be forced to remove their children from private schools by the inevitable rise in already exorbitant fees.

That moment came to my wife and me, three decades ago, when we had to remove our two oldest from what was then called Dulwich College Preparatory School, where they were contented and well taught, because we could no longer afford the fees we had to pay out of our taxed income.

Many other parents and their children are sure to face the same unhappy wrench if Sir Keir gets his way. Indeed, that figure of £1.7 billion grossly underestimates the likely cost to the state sector of accommodating the extra 144,000 pupils forecast to be driven into its arms.

As the Taxpayers’ Alliance suggests, far from bringing in cash, the policy could actually end up costing the Treasury a pretty packet.

That’s not to mention its many other drawbacks, such as the threats to bursaries for poorer pupils and the survival of private schools specialising in teaching children with special needs or gifts.

Enough to say that a future Billy Elliot from a poor family may have to kiss goodbye to any hopes of a place at the Royal Ballet School in Richmond Park.

Just ask the school’s head, David Gajadharsingh, who said this week the VAT charge was likely to ‘destroy opportunity’ for talented youngsters from less well-off families and could end up harming the reputation of ballet in the UK.

But none of this appears to matter to Sir Keir. For him, uniformity seems to trump every other consideration, in education as in healthcare, even at the risk of piling intolerable extra pressure on already overstretched frontline services.

In his view, apparently, it is better that all children should be taught in overcrowded classrooms, by overburdened teachers struggling to cope, than that some should enjoy the advantages good private schools can bestow.

No doubt all this plays well with the class warriors in his ranks, and with voters prone to envy those more successful than themselves. But I don’t think that’s the only reason he suggested it was wrong to want the best we can afford for our young, and virtuous to let loved ones suffer in endless NHS queues.

I reckon he actually believes it. But is this obsession with equality really likely to improve the nation’s fortunes?

Of course, you must vote how you wish. But give me a prime minister with human instincts and aspirations, and a human heart.