Is this the best fightback Gordon Brown can manage?
Dear Gordon Brown,
Wow, what a relief. When there was talk over the weekend of you having run out of ideas, I was mildly concerned that you might actually have some decent policies up your sleeve, waiting to be rolled out at any moment. Today you will make a speech in London to try to silence your Labour critics, of which Hazel Blears is just one, by showing that the Government has not run out of steam and fresh policy ideas. Ironically, the speech will prove precisely the opposite.
Your new, groundbreaking, career-saving, forward-thinking, voter-convincing, stunning, stellar, super-duper gobsmackingly brilliant policy is…… (wait for it) giving parents new powers to trigger local authority inspections of under-performing schools. Errr… well… errrr… hmmm. In addition, you will promise more investment and reform in education as part of Labour’s “politics of opportunity and growth” while accusing David Cameron of the “politics of austerity and defeatism”. Before this lunchtime speech, you will chair what could be a tense session of the Cabinet. Other ministers are furious with Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, who accused the Government of a “lamentable” failure to communicate in a newspaper article and mocked the Prime Minister’s YouTube video on MPs’ expenses - much to my amusement. You will use your speech to say: “Neither a free market, voucher-style reform of education, where some are helped while others are left to fall behind, nor top-down centralised government control, can provide the innovation and leadership needed to take the next steps on the road to world-class schools for our children.” Although parents could run schools if they wished to, he will argue that the vast majority of them do not want this burden. “They don’t want to be expected to do it themselves. They want world-class teachers and school providers to do it for them.” You will also announce that “action could mean either federation of underperforming schools with excellent schools, expansion of good schools and in some cases entirely new schools.”
Goodness me – where to start. Firstly, where is this new investment going to come from? I didn’t realise you had a few spare billion lying around, and you’ve also got a bloody nerve using the words “growth” and “Labour” in the same sentence. Then you accuse David Cameron of “austerity” as if that’s a bad thing! Don’t you realise that this is precisely what the public want to see: strict, simple spending plans for their taxes with little room for luxuries? The last thing they want is unfunded, undeliverable guff from the PM when they know that it will lead to more borrowing. On the issue of policy, a free market system may well leave some schools behind – so it’s lucky that the Conservatives aren’t proposing a free-market / voucher system for education. You’re just using the phrase ‘free market’ to scare the voters, knowing full well that the Conservatives are just going to give independent organisations, charities and parents the right to set up new schools and receive funding for them. Furthermore, your suggestions of school federations, expanding good schools and opening new ones are in fact very close to creating a market in education! But, all that aside, the most amusing part of today’s speech is that these new powers for parents that you are announcing today are in fact not new at all. Parents can already request an inspection by Ofsted; what you are announcing will merely make education authorities intervene at a slightly earlier stage – for example, if schools are the first choice of only a small number of pupils.
I really thought that now might be the time to bring forward a big-hitting policy from your Autumn manifesto to grab the public’s attention, to steal their imagination, to wipe away the Downing Street cobwebs and start afresh. I can only conclude that either (a) you don’t have any decent policies left, or (b) you’re stupid enough to think that this constitutes a decent policy, or (c) both of the above. If this is the toughest fightback that you can launch after one of the most humiliating weeks of your political life, the Conservatives have every reason to smile.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
And this is after 12 years of “Education, Education, Education.”
Still, with Balls heading the team, what can you expect.
Well, true, Ed Balls is a socialist at heart and cannot give himself enough power to satisfy his cravings. This policy is just tinkering around the edges of a thoroughly broken education model run by local authorities, who are now being given more control! (like that will help)
“Then you accuse David Cameron of “austerity” as if that’s a bad thing! Don’t you realise that this is precisely what the public want to see: strict, simple spending plans for their taxes with little room for luxuries? “
Since when did this bunch care what ‘the public’ wanted…?
Ok, you’ve got me there – but from an electoral point of view, I don’t think big new spending announcements will go down very well right now!
Indeed not. But they can’t very well promise cuts, can they? The unions still have a hell of a chokechain around their necks, and they aren’t shy about giving it a tug if need be….
And only in England, obviously. Brown’s own constituents won’t be affected by this.
Yup, and the unions have a chokechain around local authorites – not that they stray from the union line, mind.
Of course Brown’s voters won’t be affected, but the issue of accountability never stopped him before!
“Furthermore, your suggestions of school federations, expanding good schools and opening new ones are in fact very close to creating a market in education!”
They have also been Govt policy for at least 3 years. I cannot see anything of substance which is new. Typical Brownian relaunch of failing policies.
I love it. It’s always a ‘failure to communicate’ and never a recognition that people either don’t believe what they say or actually disagree with it. And the really funny thing is that they are visibly losing their patience with the stupid voters who just DON’T GET THAT NULABOUR HAVE DELIVERED UNTO US A UTOPIA. Bloody ingrates.
Hubris rules in Number 10!
Hasn’t stopped the BBC and Sky from introducing Brown’s speech as if it were the be-all-and-end-all, major, whizzo policy initiative.
Incidentally, shouldn’t a speech like this have been delivered by the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls? Otherwise, what is he for?
I know, I know, nothing has changed – the BBC clearly got the nod to plug this one when there was no objective reason to do so – it’s just a facade to make it look like Brown is in control and knows what he is doing (neither of which appear to be true).
Brown has a track record of stealing the best announcements. Alan Johnson has been little more than a bystander as Health Secretary, seeing as Brown has stolen countless announcements from him.
“Incidentally, shouldn’t a speech like this have been delivered by the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls? Otherwise, what is he for?“
Saving some other poor sod from winding up as Mr Yvette Cooper…?
Otherwise, what is he for?
You know the way some women deliberately cultivate female friends who are slightly fatter than they in order that they can appear slimmer? Maybe our vaguely sociopathic PM with his strange gurning and smirking at cameras decided that a twonk like blinky Balls or a human badger like Alastair make him seem more, well, human by comparison…
Funny that the BBC saw fit to mention this:
“Mr Brown talked about Britain but in the UK’s devolved education systems his proposals would apply only to England.”
Just has to get shown again.
Gordon’s strange youtube remix.
Carry on Gordon