All David Cameron has left now is abuse
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Version 0 of 1. It was like being berated for a lack of financial planning by Mr Micawber. Or boorishness by Jeremy Clarkson. To be accused by David Cameron in his party conference speech of “hypocrisy” was rich indeed. But his highly personalised attack on me, my family and upbringing spoke volumes about the man himself – and his inability, following those revelations about the Queen “purring” down the phone to invest the office of prime minister with the dignity it deserves. Behind Cameron’s ad hominem assault, two factors are at work. First, a psychological refusal by the Tory party to believe that anybody called Tristram could or should be a member of the Labour party. And, second, a realisation that on education policy we have the coalition on the run: parents have had enough of the falling standards, ideological experimentation and Michael Gove-era chaos. To be honest, I am used to the abuse. Ever since I entered the House of Commons, Conservative MPs (like so many characters from Tristram Shandy) have been confused. Theirs is a simple worldview. If you come from an advantaged background, your first priority is to pull up the ladder. That means voting for tax cuts for the top 1%, imposing a bedroom tax on the very poorest and breaking a pledge to protect Sure Start. And I, even as a Tristram, was happy to fight every one of those ugly proposals. That’s because my belief system is very different to David Cameron’s vision of social justice, where the “big society” equates to sorting out an internship for your first cousin. My father was a Labour party councillor, my great-aunt pioneered childcare on London county council and my great-grandfather was a prison visitor and schools’ inspector. They all thought public service entailed more than just family first. Now I have the privilege of representing Stoke-on-Trent in parliament – supporting the revival of the pottery industry, working to improve the city’s education results, combatting a legacy of poor public health. As such, I see first hand the damage that this government has done to industrial communities. It is in Stoke and Hull and Liverpool where the Osborne axe has fallen hardest. So while the likes of Dorset and Surrey enjoy a rise in public spending, we see our libraries, community centres and swimming pools close. It is battling this inequality that makes me Labour and proud to be Labour. The fact that I enjoyed a generous upbringing makes me even more alert to the loss of opportunity and the butchered public services that the Conservatives are committed to. Then there is education policy. At the last general election, more teachers supported Tory than Labour. Not any more. Today, teachers support Labour over the Conservatives by a factor of five to one. Those figures are reflective of the public as a whole. Because parents, pupils and teachers have come to realise the implications of Tory rule: larger class sizes, lower teacher morale, vocational neglect and the radical infiltration of schools in Birmingham. Cameron’s response is to accuse me of wanting to deny choice to parents. The prime minister has an unfortunate tic of thinking that the rules, in this case, telling the truth, don’t apply to him. Because the reality is that only the Labour party wants parents to have the choice they say matters: a good local school, a qualified teacher and a curriculum that stretches the whole child. That is certainly what I want for my kids at their state primary. Indeed, part of the reason I am so passionate about public service reform and improving educational standards is because I have a deep, personal investment in it. So, yes, we will end the free schools programme since it has damaged standards, put children at risk and wasted tens of millions of pounds. From the chaos and gender segregation of the Al-Madinah free school in Derby to the corruption of the Kings science academy in Bradford to the illiteracy on display at the Breckland free school in Suffolk, Labour will call time on this ideological experiment. In the past week alone, there have been reports of a free school in London costing £18m and teaching just 17 pupils. That is crazy. And, as the Observer revealed, the government has paid for all this by raiding the Basic Need budget, which means fewer schools in areas of demand and larger class sizes. At the same time, the government has lost sight of what really matters in education: quality of teaching and strength of leadership. There has been a damaging rise in the number of unqualified teachers and a widening attainment gap between kids on free school meals and their better-off peers. Meanwhile, Gove’s relentless exam-factory model of schooling has seen the real purpose of education – the development of character and resilience, alongside academic and vocational rigour – brutally downgraded. In short, on education policy, the chickens have come home to roost. Sure Start centres have closed, curriculum reform botched, primary places under pressure, teacher reform abandoned and, in Birmingham, the worrying consequence of an absence of local accountability. It is no surprise that all Cameron has left is abuse. So, let’s tell it as it is. Cameron has moved on little since his time as a low-rent PR man. He surrounds himself, according to the former Tory aide Dominic Cummings, with “third-rate suck-up-kick-down” sycophants. He is unloved by his MPs and distrusted by the British public. He is the frat-boy prime minister who spills confidences about the Queen and covers up policy failure with personal attacks. The Daily Telegraph suggests he needs to be careful not to be remembered “as untrustworthy and a bit of a second-rater”. The good news is that we only have another eight months of him. As for my name? Of course, the moral of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy was never, ever to christen your son Tristram. But I take comfort in the memory of Michael Foot’s progressive, campaigning brother and Labour MP. Sir Dingle Foot – that’s a proper Labour name. |