If Labour wins the next election, private schools could be in trouble. But then, so could state schools, too. Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, has warned parents that Labour’s plan to strip private schools of their charitable status would put many of them out of business. Which would in turn mean state schools being overwhelmed by a vast sudden influx of extra pupils.

He has a point. This influx would cause serious problems. State school budgets would be put under even greater strain that at present – meaning that poorer pupils would get a worse education. So a policy intended to make society fairer would in practice make it unfairer.

To compensate for this shortfall in state school budgets, the Labour government could of course raise taxes. But that would mean the parents of state school children paying more money just to receive the same standard of education they were getting more cheaply before.

Still, even if we think Labour’s policy is misguided, we should at least try to understand why Left-wingers support it. They don’t like private schools because they think the children who go to them gain an unfair advantage over those who don’t. As a result, they want this unfair advantage to be removed.

On the face of it, this argument may seem reasonable enough. But it overlooks a crucial point. Which is that there are many other unfair advantages a child can have over others.

Some children, after all, have parents who feed them healthy food, read them stories every night, ensure that they do their homework, encourage them to play in the fresh air, and prohibit them from vegetating in front of the TV all day. Clearly these children have an unfair advantage over children whose parents do none of these things. Like the privately educated, they’ve done nothing to earn this advantage – it’s simply an accident of birth, the biological luck of the draw. So, in the spirit of equality, the advantage must surely be removed.

In my view, therefore, Sir Keir Starmer should announce that the next Labour government will force-feed every child Big Macs, throw out all their books, ban them from playing in the fresh air, and make them watch at least 10 hours of TV a day. Only then will every child in Britain start life on an equal footing.

No one needs to know my pronouns

These days, businesses are naturally anxious to appear as inclusive as possible. Sometimes, though, their efforts can seem a little puzzling. Soho House, the chain of private members’ clubs, has started telling members to inform staff of their gender pronouns. They are invited to choose between no fewer than 41 options, including not just dreary old “he” and “she” but exciting “neopronouns” such as “mer”, “fae”, “cos” and “thon”.

This policy is of course wonderfully progressive and enlightened. The trouble is, I’m not sure why staff need to know what my pronouns are – because I can’t imagine when they would actually use them. Staff will surely always refer to me in the second person: i.e., by addressing me as “you”. In my presence, talking about me in the third person would be bad manners. So the staff will only refer to me in the third person when I’m not present. In which case, it will make no difference to me whether they get my pronouns right or wrong, because I won’t be there to hear them.

But perhaps I’m being short-sighted. After all, if we can have new third-person pronouns – “mer”, “fae”, “cos”, “thon” and so on – then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have new second-person pronouns, too. In which case, staff at Soho House will have to take great care not to address the wrong member as “you”, in case they aren’t a “you” at all.

Hard cheese

Every sensible adult is alert to the dangers of heroin and crack cocaine. According to one of America’s most senior politicians, however, the streets are rife with an equally addictive substance.

Cheese.

Speaking to reporters this week, Eric Adams, the Democrat mayor of New York City, issued a stark warning. “Food is addictive,” he said. “You take someone on heroin, put them in one room, and someone hooked on cheese, put ’em in another room, and you take it away – I challenge you to tell me the person who’s hooked on heroin and the person who’s hooked on cheese.”

For some reason, these comments have attracted widespread ridicule. I think this is deeply unfair. Surely we have all seen the crazed and desperate look in the eyes of a hardened brie addict. Just as we have all read the tragic stories of pale young men rushed to hospital after injecting their veins with piping hot fondue. It is for this reason that so many people are wary of giving money to beggars, in case they blow it on camembert or half a pound of double Gloucester.

In any case, it’s little wonder that the impressionable young fall prey to the dark allure of cheese, given how its use has been glamorised by rock stars. In the 1970s, Keith Richards was rumoured to be spending a million dollars a month on Dairylea Triangles alone.

In my opinion, anyone who mocks Mr Adams for his comments would do well to read Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh’s harrowing portrayal of cheese abusers in 1980s Leith.

The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling. “C’moan Rents,” he says, “gie us a chunk ae that Pecorino Romano. Jilly Goolden says it’ll pair beautifully wie a glass ae this chianti.”

Equally haunting is the scene from the film in which Ewan McGregor tosses and turns in bed while a baby with a rotating head crawls across the ceiling. A cautionary tale about the hideous nightmares that can be caused by eating cheese before bedtime.

‘Way of the World’ is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines while aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday