DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Now start repairing crumbling Britain
If there is a better metaphor for the shambolic state of Britain under this Tory Government than the crumbling schools crisis, the Mail is struggling to see it.
A sluggish economy. Spiralling NHS waiting lists. A painful cost of living. And ministers seemingly unable to control illegal immigration. There is a disquieting but inescapable sense that the walls and ceilings are tumbling in on the country.
Take a deeply troubling Mail on Sunday poll. Three-quarters of people think ‘Britain is broken’. It’s increasingly hard to disagree.
After a long summer of lassitude and drift, Rishi Sunak must have hoped Parliament’s return offered him the opportunity to hit the reset button. The last thing he needed was an omnishambles.
Yet that’s what he got. At the end of a TV interview, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was recorded on camera ranting that she had done a ‘f***ing good job’ sorting out the concrete crisis. This was as arrogant and delusional as it was witless.
If there is a better metaphor for the shambolic state of Britain under this Tory Government than the crumbling schools crisis, the Mail is struggling to see it
Hours before the new academic year started, her department had shut or partially closed 104 schools because unstable concrete made them too dangerous to enter. After assessment, hundreds more may follow.
For children now consigned to having lessons in portable cabins or, worse, Covid-style remote learning, and their parents her self-important moan will trigger fury.
Such severe disruption to their schooling is not Mrs Keegan doing a ‘good job’; it is a fiasco. And the naivety of the minister’s foul-mouthed outburst while hooked up to ITV’s microphones is flabbergasting.
The broadcaster is notoriously and unremittingly hostile to the Tory party. Could she not have waited until reaching the sanctuary of her office before venting?
It is not, of course, the Government’s fault these schools were constructed with a flawed type of concrete used widely in the 20th Century. And when classrooms considered safe deteriorated over the summer, the Department for Education rightly acted.
Yet ministers have known about this problem for years. Wouldn’t it have made sense to grasp the nettle when schools were shut during the pandemic?
The trouble is, politicians prefer shiny new projects that generate positive headlines to funding boring repairs.
Amid the ongoing scandal, it was no surprise that a former DfE mandarin called Jonathan Slater emerged to point the finger of blame at the Prime Minister.
At the end of a TV interview, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was recorded on camera ranting that she had done a ‘f***ing good job’ sorting out the concrete crisis
The embodiment of the Left-wing Whitehall Blob, he was given a platform by the BBC to attack Mr Sunak for cutting the school repairs budget while chancellor.
Naturally, the Corporation failed to mention that Mr Slater harboured a grudge, having been sacked over the Covid exam farce in 2020. The quaint notion of Civil Service neutrality is now history.
While the Government lurches from crisis to crisis, Sir Keir Starmer has given his shadow cabinet a fresh feel ahead of next year’s general election.
Bringing back Blairites once pushed to the margins by Jeremy Corbyn, he wants to persuade Middle England that they have nothing to fear from him as PM.
But is this true? After all, he fought tooth and nail to put Mr Corbyn, an anti-Semite Marxist, in No 10. And while pledges such as not raising income tax are designed not to scare the horses, he has flip-flopped so many times he simply can’t be trusted.
There is no great affection for Sir Keir. But to have a chance of beating him, the Conservatives must show improvements on migration, the economy and NHS.
A year ago tomorrow, the hugely popular Boris Johnson quit as PM after being toppled in a coup by Tory MPs not fit to polish his shoes – emboldened by Mr Sunak himself.
Having seized the crown he so desperately craved, it is imperative his premiership is a success. If Britain continues to limp along, could voters be blamed for turfing him out?
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