DAN HODGES
AT THE start of last week, Theresa May’s administration experienced its first major leak. An official was photographed sauntering up Downing Street, ‘accidentally’ flashing a briefing from Justine Greening revealing the Education Secretary’s view of plans for introducing new grammar schools. They shouldn’t even be contemplated until work on the expansion of existing grammars had been conducted, and reforms of those schools put in place to ensure those who didn’t get in were not disadvantaged, explained the document, which continued: ‘I simply don’t know what the PM thinks of this.’
We know now. On Friday Mrs May gave her first major policy speech since becoming PM. Sweeping aside Greening’s reservations, she unveiled what has been described as nothing less than ‘an education revolution’. A lifting on the ban on new grammar schools. An expansion of single-faith schools. The option for all state schools to introduce some form of academic selection.
It was a bold and radical policy announcement. But, contrary to the spin and reporting, it does not reflect a revolution, merely a masterful piece of political deflection.
May’s biggest achievement in her first two months as Prime Minister has been to make people forget she’s only been in the job two months. Her confident demeanour, swift appointment of her new Government, and unflashy style have rightly won her many plaudits. But they have also masked a significant political reality. Namely that when it comes to the biggest single issue facing her premiership, for the moment at least, Theresa May doesn’t know what she is doing.
The image May and her team have successfully constructed is that of a seasoned stateswoman, slowly but skilfully charting her way through treacherous economic, political and diplomatic waters. But peer through the grammar schools squall, and this week has revealed the truth. She is still a novice sailor with no chart, a leaking vessel and no idea in what direction landfall lies.
ON ONE level this is unsurprising. When May entered Downing Street, the debris from the biggest political implosion since 1945 was still raining down across Westminster. Where most political leaders have years, or at least months, to prepare for their elevation to the most pressured job in the land, she had hours. Her time providing a steady hand at the Home Office was substantive but restrictive, allowing for relatively minimal input into high-profile areas such as foreign affairs, and almost none into economic decisionmaking, or wider social policy.
The grammar schools announcement is an attempt to mask all this. It is true that as a former grammar school girl herself, May does not share the ideological objection of her political opponents – and a number of her own supporters – to the principles of early selection. As she rightly points out, house prices in areas with good schools currently do that job just as efficiently.
But as we have already seen, one of her political strengths is her pragmatism. And because of that pragmatism she is aware grammar schools are at best a blunt – at worst a destructive – instrument when it comes to social advancement.
The reason May chose to make her first major announcement about grammar schools is not because she believes they’ll be socially transformative. It’s because at the moment she is unable to speak coherently about the real issue that will define her premiership – Brexit.
This was the week the thinly constructed façade on Brexit crumbled. ‘Brexit means Brexit,’ May had boldy declared. Well, now we know Brexit doesn’t mean Brexit, and Brexit cannot mean Brexit.
Brexit – as sold to and bought by the British people in the referendum – was constructed around three fundamentals. The end of the system of free European migration to the UK, and its replacement by a points-based migration system. The withdrawal of the UK from the European single market. And the replacement of the UK’s place in the single market with a new network of individual trade deals.
The first of these – the pointsbased migration system – was junked by May last Sunday. It was unworkable she said. Faced with a series of ‘May goes soft on immigration’ headlines, she pivoted, and said she remained committed to getting net migration down to the tens of thousands. ‘How would she do this?’ she was asked. She couldn’t say. On Monday, new Brexit Minister David Davis made his first appearance in the Commons. Tasked with explaining what ‘Brexit means Brexit’ actually means these days, he said it was ‘very improbable’ that Britain could remain in the single market.
He was swiftly slapped down by Downing Street. That was not May’s view, officials said. On Wednesday, Australian Trade Minister Steven Ciobo announced that contrary to predictions of a swift trade deal with the UK, one would be secured ‘when the time is right’.
He added negotiations couldn’t even begin for another two and a half years. Questioned about this, May said Britain could become ‘the global leader in free trade’. ‘How could this be achieved?’ she was asked. Once again, she couldn’t say.
May’s mask of steely competence has finally slipped, to be replaced with one of steely indecision. ‘It would not be right for me or this Government to give a running commentary on negotiations,’ she defiantly told the House of Commons at Prime Minister’s Questions last week. Understandably. Because if she did, that commentary would consist of the simple statement: ‘We don’t know where we’re going with this. Let me get back to you.’
May is well aware that despite the bombastic rhetoric from the Leave campaigners, she is confronted with a circle that cannot be squared. Or more accurately, a triangle that cannot be squared. The voters expect – indeed have demanded – a swift and dramatic reduction in net migration.
But there is no swift or dramatic solution available. Even if there was, it cannot be delivered without Britain’s ejection from the single market – which invites economic catastrophe. And as Australia, the US and Japan have all underlined this week, the free trade deals supposed to offset that catastrophe will take years, if not decades, to negotiate.
Over the next few months May’s hesitation on Brexit will be framed as tactical acumen. The phrase ‘keeping her cards close to her chest’ will be heard a lot. Again, it will be spin. The Prime Minister isn’t setting out her strategy on Brexit for one very simple reason. She doesn’t currently have one.
This was not the week Theresa may became a bad PM, but it did remind us she is an inexperienced one and facing challenges without modern political parallel. The country’s most successful grammar school girl is sitting her most difficult test. And soon she will have to come up with some answers.
LABOUR’S great and good gathered on Tuesday for the launch of Ed Balls’s new book Speaking Out, where much of the discussion centred on rumours of an impending Labour split, including a rather surprising plea for unity. ‘They mustn’t do it,’ former Foreign Secretary and SDP founding father, David Owen, told me. ‘They’ll just get swallowed up. It would be a disaster.’ How different history could have been if that had been his view in 1981.
UKIP’S travails continue. The annual conference in Bournemouth had been billed as ‘a party like no other’ following the successful Brexit vote. But I’m told that so far only 200 tickets have been sold. ‘It’ll be more like a wake than a party,’ one miserable official informs me.