Get off the fence!
As Sir Keir f inally reveals HIS children HAVE been going to school, why hasn’t he backed return for all?
KEIR Starmer was challenged to ‘get off the fence’ over the schools reopening row last night after admitting his own children have been going to classes.
The Labour leader revealed his son, 11, and nine-year-old daughter were attending lessons in Camden, North London because his wife Victoria has key worker status as an NHS occupational therapist.
Sir Keir said that ‘our children have been in school throughout [the virus crisis]’ – adding that the perception that all schools were shut was wrong.
But his comments sparked anger from Tories who have accused him of avoiding a confrontation with the teaching unions by not speaki ng out on the controversy of whether schools should begin to reopen across the country from June 1. One Tory MP attacked the Labour leader for apparently not realising that so far ‘only a fraction’ of pupils were attending classes in person.
Sir Keir has sparked private concern from some of his MPs for ‘ going missing’ in the thorny debate over getting children back to school.
He has a l l e gedl y left it to the party’s schools spokesman Rebecca Long-Bailey to show backing for unions over their safety concerns of returning to class.
But i n an i nterview, t he Labour l eader i nsisted he wanted the process of getting children back in class ‘to happen as soon as it can’ as long as it was safe for them to do so. He called on unions, parents and the Government to come together to achieve that, urging Boris Johnson to ‘build consensus’.
Sir Keir told the Daily Telegraph: ‘Rather than accentuating the differences here, the Prime Minister should pull a task force together, and say, “Right, we are going to lead from the front”.
‘If the Prime Minister said, I’ll set up a task force of teaching unions, parents, local authorities and government, everybody else who needs to be around the table, to put your shoulder to the wheel, let’s get on with t his.’ The Labour l eader stopped short of openly backing the giant National Education Union (NEU) which is leading opposition to a June 1 return. But he said the union’s five tests for reopening – including a national plan for social distancing – were ‘perfectly reasonable tests that can be met’. Sir Keir faced criticism last night that his call for unity ‘rings a bit hollow’ given the union opposition to a phased reopening of schools.
Tory MP Tom Hunt, a member of the Commons education committee, also said that the Labour leader was still not ‘coming off the fence – he still seems to be perched on one’. He added: ‘ Clearly things seem to have worked out ok for his children as they’ve been eligible to attend school t hroughout t his period and I would imagine are receiving a good education. ‘ However, the reality is that only a fraction of school age children are currently attending school and only a small proportion of those who are eligible to do so are. ‘The reality is that his children will most likely not fall behind as a result of this crisis. Sadly, this isn’t the case for many millions of other children who are not eligible to attend school and could be dependent on home environments that are far from ideal for school learning.’
Sources close to Sir Keir last night rejected the Tory criticisms of his schools policy.
In his interview, the staunch Remainer made it clear he would not seek to take the UK back into the EU. And he added that Labour should not be ‘ shy’ about being seen as ‘patriotic’.
Why did the BBC’s hero Sir Keir not tell us HIS children were in school? U-turns? More like the crazy motions of a balloon looping the loop as the air squirts out Nobody who voted for Brexit voted for the devastation of our countryside
IT IS hard to think of a more ill-judged, ill-timed and badly thought- out Government policy than the plan to quarantine travellers entering or returning to this country. It is months too late to do any good. Its faults are so obvious that they ought not to need stating. But let us point out to Ministers yet again that these rules will stifle any recovery in our airports and airline industries, huge employers and mainstays of our economy. They will do so just as the rest of Europe is beginning to pick itself up off the floor, and to reopen for business.
Like so much that has come out of the Government machine for the past few weeks, the scheme has been a muddle from start to finish. First, France was going to be exempted from the quarantine, and then it was not.
First, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said there was going to be an ‘air-bridge’ allowing unhindered travel to and from certain favoured holiday destinations. Then the idea was publicly demolished by the rest of the Cabinet.
This sort of thing cannot even be dismissed as zig-zagging. That would be too kind. It looks more like the crazy motions of a wayward party balloon, looping the loop as the air squirts out of it.
There does not seem to be any credible idea of how the quarantine system will work in practice. It is likely to be a mixture of the wildly illiberal, with a few individuals besieged by officious police, while nothing happens to thousands of others – much like the general enforcement of the lockdown when it first began.
The attempt to reopen England’s schools has been another farce, with policy apparently made up from minute to minute. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson mused about opening the schools during what would have been the summer holidays, but fled in confusion as soon as the teachers’ unions – predictably – denounced it.
But none of the Government’s screeching U-turns on this subject has been as bad as the performance of the BBC’s new hero, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
Sir Keir’s wife turns out to be a key worker, so the couple’s children have been able to attend school throughout the crisis.
This information, which finally dribbled out in a newspaper interview yesterday, should surely have been public knowledge from the start. There is nothing wrong with Sir Keir benefiting from this provision. On the contrary, his experience means that he knows better than most that it is perfectly possible for schools to operate under conditions of social distancing.
But in that case why has he not raised his voice in support of the general reopening of schools for the multitude of voters who long to see their children back in their classrooms? Parents worry with good reason about the longterm damage that the closure of education has already done, especially for the children of the disadvantaged. It was cowardly and self-serving of Sir Keir not to stand up for a policy he knew for certain was workable. It is a distressing sign that, even with Jeremy Corbyn gone, Labour is still far too much in the hands of union apparatchiks who care more about sectional interests than the public good.
But the poor performance of the official Opposition should not distract us from the deeper problem of the Government.
Boris Johnson has a huge capacity for leadership. He can speak directly to the public in a way few politicians can, and which many envy. He has shown throughout his time in politics that he is innovative and open-minded, and a great believer in the power of free people to do good, if they are left alone to get on with it.
But while we sympathise with him for his undoubted ordeal, in undergoing the illness he has done so much to fight against, we must still urge him, in the friendliest possible way, to get a grip.
His Government, far from leading the nation out of the lockdown, seems to be following the nation out of lockdown. Having loosened some of the restraints on movement and trade, the Cabinet has watched while the nation has pushed at the new boundaries, issuing occasional warnings that we should not go too far but offering no real idea of when the mighty engines of the national economy can begin to turn at full power again.
For there are plenty of other problems that need to be dealt with – most notably the rapidlyapproaching moment of full Brexit. The Mail on Sunday reports today on the urgent concerns of farmers that the new post-Brexit trading rules, and plans for subsidies paid to landowners regardless of whether they actually cultivate their acres, could unintentionally destroy much of our agriculture.
If we are not careful, we could permit huge cheap imports of food produced with far lower standards than ours. Nobody who voted for Brexit voted for the devastation of our countryside or the extinction of the traditional stewardship of the soil which contributes so much to the beauty of our unique landscape.
With all these problems in front of him, Boris Johnson would do well to remind the nation of just what an inspiring and invigorating figure he can be. Yet these advantages are being wasted.
In recent weeks he has often seemed absent from the stage, leaving lacklustre lieutenants to do almost all the talking. It is plainly time for him to be seen and heard much more in public, reminding people of the force and wit with which he won the December Election, and of the real power which holds this Government together.
This is necessary for the nation as much as for him. The old hard Left are stirring again. They see the Covid crisis, with its enlarged role for the State and public spending, as an opportunity to return to the days of incessant State intervention in the smallest details of life.
The Trades Union Congress chief, Frances O’Grady, proclaimed last week that ‘the unions are back’ and that ‘the State is back’. This is not the lesson that many will take from these events, but it is the one the whole Left, from the TUC to the BBC and the liberal elite in education, law and media want us to take.
It needs a tough-minded Conservative Government to ensure that, in the years of rebuilding that lie ahead, Britain is not dragged back into the over-regulated over-taxed, greyness from which it escaped under Margaret Thatcher. Time for you to show your mettle, Boris.