It’s a long time since I had to decline amo, amas, amat in my school Latin classes. But there is one more modern declension to which I regularly return: I exercise my choice; you take advantage of circumstances; he is a hypocrite.

Last week, Anthony Seldon, the headmaster of Brighton College, used the ‘h’ word about a certain set of middle class parents who educate their children in the state sector. Attacking the “conventional wisdom” which holds that parents who go private are “selfish, not community-minded and are essentially social snobs who choose these schools to keep their children away from the great unwashed”, he pointed out that many are “very ordinary” people who work hard to save enough money to afford the fees. The real “moral unworthies”, as Dr Seldon put it, are “the middle-class parents who squeeze and twist the system for their own advantage to get their own children into the best state schools”. They are “the worst moral hypocrites”, who pay a premium for their house to ensure that their children live within the catchment areas of the best state schools.

Ouch. No sooner had the words left his mouth than the wrath of ‘Hypocritical of Tunbridge Wells’ descended on him. He had, of course, done the undoable – he had pierced the cosy self-image of the Guardian reading classes. They say how much they despise private education for ‘buying privilege’ at the very moment as the money leaves their bank account to pay the mortgage on their house, which just happens to be a quarter of mile away from the state school high up in the league tables. They boast how their children are being brought up without special advantages, whilst forking out hundreds of pounds a month for Henry and Amanda’s extra maths lessons. It’s notable how many opponents of independent schools pay for such tuition, whilst angrily condemning the morals of those who make enormous sacrifices to send their children to a private school. And what an extraordinarily convenient bonus it is for these hypocrites that they get to keep all their salary, unburdened by having to pay school fees. Who can blame them? Life wouldn’t really be worth living without that winter holiday to the Caribbean.

A fascinating study by the estate agency Knight Frank has demonstrated precisely the effect to which Dr Seldon referred. It found that the presence of a good state school has a marked impact on property prices, with Guildford, Tunbridge Wells and Beaconsfield prime examples. In St Albans, local estate agents remarked on this trend back in 1996; parents are especially keen to get their daughters into St Albans Girls School, consistently one of the top-rated comprehensives in the country. Property within its catchment area is around thirty percent more expensive than in other, otherwise similar, parts of St Albans. Or take Tetherdown Primary School, one of only 142 schools (out of the 20,000 in the country) to be awarded a perfect 100 per cent score in the national tests for 11-year-olds last summer. Live more than half a mile away from Tetherdown and it is almost impossible to get your child in. So qualifying properties cost – pure cause and effect - an average of £700,000, a premium estimated by local agents to be around 35 per cent.

One area of London is renowned for its schools: Muswell Hill. Well off professionals flock to it, knowing that living there will negate the need to pay school fees. Where is Tetherdown? You guessed it: Muswell Hill.

It’s very easy to proclaim your faith in the state system, and to condemn those who leave it, when you can afford to live in Muswell Hill. But when you’re in not a middle class ghetto but in one bordering a sink - or even a bog standard - school, then the much trumpeted equity of the state system is as mythical as the morality of the lefty middle classes.

Such hypocrisy goes far beyond schools. The Guardian reader’s life is built on a foundation of self-deceit and double standards, with one rule for themselves and another for everyone else. They despise private medical insurance. It’s queue jumping! It’s immoral! But when their hip replacement is urgent, and their firm can’t afford them to be off work any longer…Well, they might not have wanted it, but all those premiums were paid as part of their salary package. So – they’ve got no real choice, have they? - they’ll use the insurance. It’s for the firm’s benefit, you understand. They’re far too valuable an asset to sit around waiting for the NHS.

What’s their passion? The environment. It’s so worrying what we’re doing to the planet. It’s important to support Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. They considered voting Green last time, but until our unfair voting system is changed it would have been a wasted vote. What do you mean, why have they driven to the supermarket instead of taking public transport? How else are they expected to get the 36 bottles of Evian home. And they have to stop off at the bottle bank on the way.

They loathe American ‘cultural imperialism’, and bemoan the absence of European films at the local multiplex: ‘it’s all Hollywood rubbish’. OK, so they liked American Beauty, but that wasn’t really American; it was directed by a Brit. They loved their week in Miami, with the wonderful weather and the ‘have a nice day’ service. And the kids adored Disneyworld, But that’s the problem with America: it’s all so false. And Americans are so materialistic. And stupid. Not that they’re racist. We’re all the same under the skin.

They abhor all violence and terror. That’s why the Iraq War was so awful: we dropped bombs on all those innocent civilians. Saddam was a monster, yes; but we’ve not done anything about Mugabe. So it can’t be right for us to be interfering in Iraq. Yes, what happened on 9/11 was just horrific. But you really do have to ask why those people were driven to do it.

It’s fitting that the newly canonised patron saint of middle class hypocrites, Jenny Tonge, is the MP for another enclave, Richmond. The suicide bombers who murder those Israelis are terrible. Violence is never the answer. But the Israelis are beastly to them, beastly. And the way Jenny’s been treated is beastly, too.

No one is free from hypocrisy. None of us practise entirely as we preach. But there is something uniquely offensive about this lefty hypocrisy. The very people who seek to lecture the rest of the world about decent living and equity more often than not turn out, on closer examination, to be the most grotesque hypocrites of the lot.