Politics
EXCLUSIVE: New Labour MP Keir Mather’s Comms Team have been desperately trying to hide his Private School education
Before getting elected, many MPs are advised to clean up their social media presence to avoid any potential embarrassing information or ill-advised comments coming to light.
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And it seems that new Labour MP Keir Mather – who was elected as the new MP for Selby and Ainsty at the tender age of just 25 last Friday – has clearly heeded this advice.
Some time after his nomination as the Labour candidate for the seat back in June, Mr Mather’s old Twitter account (@keiramather) was completely deleted, and information from his Facebook page was also reportedly wiped off the face of the earth.
Mr Mather has since replaced his old handle with a totally fresh account – the slightly awkward looking @Mather_Keir.
However, one other piece of information that the new Labour MP clearly does not want to get out into the public realm is the fact that he went to a private school.
Labour politicians – especially those with big dreams of high office – are always extremely keen to try and talk up their supposed “working class credentials” to the public. None more so than the current Labour leader, and Mr Mather’s namesake, Keir Starmer.
During Starmer’s many enthralling speeches and numerous relaunches, the Labour leader has routinely emphasised his “normal” upbringing, boring the country half to death by repeatedly telling us about how his ‘father was a toolmaker’, his ‘mother was a nurse’, and how he grew up in normal ‘pebble-dashed semi’.
Mr Starmer’s claims to an ordinary childhood are also boosted by the fact that he only ever went to state schools.
The same cannot be said of Mr Mather, however, and his Comms team have been desperately trying to hide the fact – going so far as to intentionally mislead Evolve Politics, in writing, by claiming that he never actually did.
The day following his election, Mr Mather declared he was in total support of Keir Starmer’s policy not to abolish the widely-hated two-child benefit cap.
Incoming Labour MP Keir Mather defends the party’s plan to keep the two child benefit cap. pic.twitter.com/t4MdZw91cZ
— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) July 21, 2023
It was at this point that we decided to conduct a small cursory amount of research into his background and explore where his allegiances and priorities might lie.
Most of Mather’s background is well-documented, such as the fact he went to Oxford Uni, was a Parliamentary Researcher to Wes Streeting, and that his most recent job was at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) .
However, during our research we discovered two less well-known pieces of information.
Several sources told us that, whilst studying at Oxford Uni, Mr Mather had previously worked as a researcher for the former Tory MP and Times journalist Matthew Parris. This little nugget of information was essentially confirmed to us when Mr Parris – not usually one to praise Labour MPs – wrote a glowing appraisal of Mr Mather in The Times last Friday.
However, on a number of other news websites it also said Mather attended Hymers College – an all-through private school for children aged 3-18, located in his home town of Hull. This piece of information was also included on Mr Mather’s official Wikipedia page, with a link to one of the news articles cited as a source.
However, the fact that Mr Mather went to private school had not been included in the BBC article documenting his rise to power, or in a number of other big mainstream publications.
As things stand, the privately-educated are hugely over-represented in Parliament compared to the general population, with around 30% of MPs having gone to a private school compared to just 7% of the general public.
We feel that elitism is an issue of public importance – especially when it comes to Labour, the party who were founded to represent ordinary people.
Therefore, due to the lack of reportage of the information, we decided to post a tweet documenting Mr Mather’s private school education, as well as publicising the exact fees that the school charges for a full 11-year education – a cool £138,025 in total.
The tweet subsequently gained a bit of traction, picking up hundreds of retweets (and the attention of a few of Mr Mather’s extremely pleasant and definitely not highly abusive supporters).
However, the following afternoon at 12:52, Evolve Politics received a very straightforward and to-the-point email from Labour Communications Officer by the name of Phoebe Plomer.
The email simply stated:
“Hello,
“Keir Mather MP did not attend Hymers College as you have reported. He went to South Hunsley comprehensive school in Brough.
“Please issue a correction immediately and let me know who I can take this up with.
“Phoebe”
Now, as you can imagine, this new information came as a bit of a shock to us. We had a number of sources claiming that Mr Mather did indeed attend Hymers, including former pupils and a member of staff. In addition, the information was included on a number of news articles and on his Wikipedia page. Things seemed a little strange.
However, we really don’t mess about with corrections and complaints.
The email was sent from an official @Labour.org.uk email account, addressed from an official Labour Communications Officer listed on their site, and was claiming an absolutely cast iron fact that we had apparently misreported. Surely, of all people, an official Labour Communications Officer would know where Mr Mather was educated. And so we simply assumed that all of our other sources must be mistaken somehow.
We didn’t think twice. Our initial tweet was immediately deleted, and a full and frank retraction and apology was posted with equal prominence to our Twitter account just 25 minutes later:
Unsurprisingly, our tweet correcting the record attracted yet more extremely polite comments from Mr Mather’s supporters.
In addition to our tweeted correction, we also replied to Ms Plomer’s email apologising for the error – adding that we would be pinning the tweet to our Twitter Home Page for 7 days as a courtesy, and explaining that if they were not happy with our response, they were free to take the issue up further with our regulator, Impress:
We assumed this would be the end of things.
However, throughout the day we began receiving further information from people telling us we were actually correct all along. And so we re-read the email and began to research further.
The first thing we did was go to Mr Mather’s Wikipedia page to check the Edit History of his page to see who had been adding and removing the reference to Hymers College. And what did we find?
An anonymous Wikipedia user with an IP address located right next to Parliament had removed the reference to Hymers College, citing “Schooling misinformation“.
Following this removal, a debate began to rage on the Talk section of Keir Mather’s Wikipedia page about whether or not the MP did, in fact, attend Hymers. This debate included references to Evolve‘s initial tweet and subsequent retraction:
But, the second thing we realised was that the email sent by Ms Plomer to us only actually accounted for Mr Mather’s Secondary education – at South Hunsley Comprehensive. Furthermore, it used a classic non-denial denial technique, by adding “as you reported” to the end of the refutation – indicating to us that only a small detail of what we reported might be wrong.
By this point the fact that Mr Mather had attended South Hunsley at Secondary level was indisputable – given that he is included in a number of their publicly available newsletters, and is also listed as having attended Hunsley in an Oxford University newsletter too.
However, Hymers College is not just a private secondary school. Hymers also caters for years 1 through 6, with Hymers Hessle Mount catering for pre-school until year 2, and Hymers College Junior School serving years 3-6.
And the more and more we dug, the more and more we became convinced that despite his Communication’s team’s denials, Mr Mather did indeed attend Hymers private school at Junior level. But, because our initial tweet contained a picture of the Senior school rather than the Junior School, it is this little detail that Ms Plomer was misleadingly basing her demand for a retraction on.
And so, after searching every record, every news outlet, and every social media platform for literally any reference whatsoever, we finally found it – a social media post that Mr Mather clearly forgot about.
A single post to the ‘Hymers College Old Hymerians Facebook’ page that simply read:
“Can anyone help an Old Hymerian please?
“Housing help needed!
“Hey everyone! In late January/early February I’m going to be moving to London to start a new job and am looking for a room to rent. If anyone has a place, or knows anyone who does who they could put me in touch with, then please do let me know!
“Keir A. Mather”
This Facebook post appears to confirm our local sources, who indicated that Mr Mather attended Hymers Private School at junior level and then moved to South Hunsley Comprehensive for his secondary education.
In addition, the Facebook post was published on January 4th 2022 and perfectly correlates with the information contained in Mr Mather’s LinkedIn profile page which states that he took up his new role at the CBI, in London, in January 2022:
Wikipedia are also now linking to the Facebook post as a source for Mr Mather’s attendance at Hymers, but a mystery user keeps removing it, with one Wikpedia editor on the article alleging there is “”
We have contacted Mr Mather’s Communications Team asking for clarification of our findings. However, they have so far failed to respond.
A very real tale that public figures can do everything they want to erase their histories to try and hide the truth from the public, but – in this modern day and age – the internet never forgets.
Healey: British Government Now Considering Raising Terrorist Threat Level
Exclusive footage provided to Skwawkbox direct from migrant workers in Doha, Qatar shows large fires from Iranian missile strikes — and continuing barrages overnight from 28 February into the early hours of 1 March 2026.
Iran continues to strike US bases in Doha and Bahrain in retaliation for illegal and unprovoked US and Israeli attacks on its people:
While the air defences in Qatar appear to intercept some of the barrage, other missiles are clearly getting through. The US has tried to deny significant damage to its bases, but at least some of its radar facilities in the region have been destroyed.
Featured image via the Canary
President Donald Trump’s overnight strikes are forcing a hypothetical debate into reality.
And a president with extraordinary control over his party’s base will test how far his supporters will follow him on an issue that polling showed divided his coalition.
Just half of 2024 Trump voters, 50 percent, supported military action in a POLITICO poll last month — but 30 percent opposed it. Those fractures, combined with largely unified opposition from Democrats, meant Americans broadly did not want an attack on Iran.
In the January POLITICO poll, nearly half of Americans, 45 percent, said the United States should not take military action in Iran; fewer than one-third, 31 percent, said it should. An Economist/YouGov poll conducted last weekend similarly found broad public opposition to military action in Iran.
The stakes are particularly high for a Republican Party already staring down a difficult midterm landscape, where even small defections from their winning 2024 coalition could carry outsized consequences.
Part of the challenge for Trump is that support for military intervention in Iran was strongest among Trump’s base — and far weaker outside of it. A 61 percent majority of Trump voters who self-identified as “MAGA Republicans” said they support military action, according to The POLITICO Poll conducted Jan. 16 to 19, when Trump was ramping up his rhetoric against Iran but an outright attack remained hypothetical. That’s much higher than the 42 percent of Trump voters who do not identify as “MAGA” who said the same.
That leaves Trump navigating an evolving issue where support within his coalition — at least before the strikes — was real but not overwhelming and where overall public opposition outweighed support.
Democrats were largely unified. Two-thirds of voters who backed former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 said the U.S. should not intervene in Iran, while just 18 percent said it should, the POLITICO survey conducted by Public First found. The Economist/YouGov found 76 percent of Democrats opposed an attack. That Democratic unity is a warning sign for the GOP: It means that before the strikes, there were not enough pro-intervention Democrats to offset the anti-intervention Republicans.
Trump has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to reshape Republican public opinion, bringing his voters along on issues including trade and foreign policy. Whether that pattern holds here may depend on how the conflict unfolds.
“The political risk depends on the outcome,” Michigan-based Republican strategist Jason Roe told POLITICO. “If we break Iran without terrorist attacks coming to America or harm coming to allies in the region, it will be a political win for Trump. … If this expands into a protracted conflict, or ends up with troops on the ground, it will be a liability.”
That dynamic underscores the broader tension inside the modern GOP — a party base deeply loyal to the president and largely unified around an “America First” prerogative, now being tested by his own foreign policy decisions.
The divide also illustrates the longtime debate within the Republican Party between the hawks favoring a more aggressive posture on the world stage and those skeptical of intervention.
Mercedes Schlapp, a senior fellow at the Conservative Political Action Conference, said the length and severity of conflict could determine how Trump’s MAGA base responds.
“I think that the MAGA base will make it very loud and clear to the President that they will not necessarily agree, if it becomes a situation that it becomes a prolonged war,” she said on C-SPAN’s Ceasefire earlier this week.
Polling was already showing early signs of skepticism about overseas entanglements, including among Republicans. A February POLITICO Poll found that 47 percent of Americans said the U.S. government is too focused on international issues and not focused enough on domestic ones, while roughly one-quarter said it is striking the right balance.
The question did not reference Trump directly. Even so, 41 percent of his 2024 voters said the U.S. government is too focused on international issues, including about half — 49 percent — of Trump voters who do not consider themselves MAGA Republicans.
Those non-MAGA Trump voters are especially important for the GOP heading into November, and the president’s ability to overcome their initial opposition could prove crucial to maintaining control of Congress. Otherwise, if they swing back to Democrats — or sit out the midterms — Trump’s base alone is not enough to carry his party to midterm successes.
Researchers increasingly think that our Circadian rhythm, or body clock, matters more to our sleep than we realise. In fact, one study suggested our internal rhythm might matter more than sleep duration when it comes to feeling rested.
And in an Australian paper, which was published in Sleep Medicine, researchers found that people who struggle with racing thoughts that keep them up at night seem to have differences in their Circadian rhythm.
“Unlike good sleepers, whose cognitive state shifted predictably from daytime problem-solving to nighttime disengagement, those with insomnia failed to downshift as strongly,” the study’s lead researcher, Professor Kurt Lushington, said.
Why might people with racing thoughts at night have different body clocks?
In this research, scientists placed 32 adults (half of whom had insomnia; the other half were healthy sleepers) in an environment with as few external body clock cues as possible.
They were placed in a bed in a dimly-lit room for 24 hours, with carefully-measured food and activity. This was done to isolate the participant’s Circadian rhythms.
The scientists noticed that, even with no factors like sunlight, most participants’ body clock worked roughly in tandem in the daytime: their mental acitivty was highest in the morning and tapered off in the afternoon.
But among the insomniacs, whose racing thoughts kept them up at night, some differences were noted later on.
Not only was their “cognitive peak” – the time at which their mind was busiest – 6.5 hours later, on average, than those without insomnia, but, Dr Lushington said, “Their thought patterns stayed more daytime-like in the nighttime hours when the brain should be quietening”.
Sleep, he added, is “about the brain disengaging from goal-directed thought and emotional involvement.
“Our study shows that in insomnia, this disengagement is blunted and delayed, likely due to circadian rhythm abnormalities. This means that the brain doesn’t receive strong signals to ‘power down’ at night.”
Is there anything I can do to stop my brain racing at night?
According to study co-author Professor Jill Dorrian, this research could help to guide insomnia treatments which focus on sufferers’ body clocks in the future.
“These include timed light exposure and structured daily routines that may restore the natural day-night variation in thought patterns,” she said (sleep experts have previously recommended getting some outdoor morning light if you can, as this helps to regulate our Circadian rhythm).
Additionally, Professor Dorrian ended, “Practising mindfulness may also help quieten the mind at night”.
John Healey has refused to say whether the UK government backs the US and Israeli bombing of Iran which killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The defence secretary would only confirm that Britain “played no part” in the military action.
Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard confirmed in the early hours of Sunday that Khamenei had died, and said it would launch its “most-intense offensive operation” against American and Israeli targets in response.
That led to Donald Trump warning they “better not do that, because if they do we will hit them with a force that has never been seen before”.
Countries across the Middle East have already been attacked by Iran as tensions in the region threaten to explode into a full-blown war
Nevertheless, Healey refused to be drawn on the government’s position when asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.
She asked the cabinet minister whether he thought the American and Israeli action was “reckless or do you think it was right”?
Healey said: “We played no part in these strikes as Britain.”
But Kuenssberg told him: “We know that, you’ve said that already. But this is a moment of history.
“Everyone watching this morning will want to know and expect to know from their government is Britain on the side of those two countries who have killed Iran’s Supreme Leader?”
Healey said: “I think people watching will want to know now, today, that Britain is on top of what’s necessary to do what we can to keep them safe, to reinforce regional stability, prevent further escalation, and that’s my task and that’s my priority as defence secretary of the UK.”
The US and Israel described Saturday’s attacks on Iran as a “pre-emptive” strike against a Tehran government intent on developing nuclear weapons.
It retaliation from Iran, with strikes reported in several Gulf countries including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
In a statement from Downing Street on Saturday, Keir Starmer said the UK “played no role” in the strikes on Iran.
“But we have long been clear – the regime in Iran is utterly abhorrent,” he added.
“They have murdered thousands of their own people, brutally crushed dissent, and sought to destabilise the region.”
Starmer said Iran “must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon” and called for the resumption of diplomatic efforts to prevent that from happening.
He said: “Iran can end this now. They should refrain from further strikes, give up their weapons programmes, and cease the appalling violence and repression against the Iranian people – who deserve the right to determine their own future, in line with our longstanding position.
“That is the route to de-escalation and back to the negotiating table.”
‘Iran and the regime Ayatollah Khamenei has led for so long, it’s a source of evil’
Defence Secretary @JohnHealey_MP tells @TrevorPTweets: ‘Few people will mourn the Ayatollah’s death’
Latest: https://t.co/e3lpOq42Nx pic.twitter.com/6HPq8ZwtWk
— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 1, 2026
Bahrainis have been filmed cheering “like it’s New Year’s fireworks” as a new barrage of Iranian missiles hit a US base in Bahrain:
The footage brings to mind scenes from the June 2025 ’12-day war’ in which Palestinians cheered as they watched Iranian missiles slam into their oppressor’s military facilities.
The small island in the Persian Gulf, which was a British protectorate (also read: colony) in the 19th century, has a majority Shia population and a Sunni king. In 2011, Bahrain saw a popular uprising violently crushed by an army from Saudi Arabia and its allies, which remain stationed (also read as occupying) on the island.
Iran’s strikes on the US and Israel are in retaliation for the axis’s unprovoked attacks on Iran, which murdered hundreds on 28 February 2026, including at least 85 schoolgirls and their teachers.
Featured image via the Canary
“Britain played no part in the strikes on Iran”
Defence Secretary John Healey says “it is for the US” to explain whether its strikes on Iran are within international law#BBCLauraKhttps://t.co/CkTHGctZ4k pic.twitter.com/1aIAJAiPZe
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) March 1, 2026
John Healey Refuses Six Times to Say if UK Backs Strikes on Iran
Zack Polanski Defends Iranian Regime: It Was Already at the Negotiating Table
Nigella Lawson’s ‘magnificent’ chocolate cake recipe has a surprising ingredient
Gold, silver prices likely to soar tomorrow amid escalating Middle East war; what lies ahead?
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