I watched Rishi Sunak’s conference speech form beginning to end yesterday. It was a masterpiece of presentation which glided effortlessly over the contradictions. What effrontery to claim to be the candidate for change when you’ve been in power for 13 years and connived at if not created the messes that need clearing up. Chutzpah to the power of three.
The speech was billed to start of 11h15 put that became 11h40 and then “soon.” It did not actually begin until after 12. Can’t we get a simple thing like that right? How would we react if theatres, concerts, other TV and radio programmes were as sloppy about their timing?
The speech was preceded by a toe-curling tribute from Mrs S which for those serious about politics acted more of a cool-down than a warm-up. However the audience loved it. The Tories are masters (and mistresses) of manipulation
In between the crowd-pleasers (his ascension from modest beginnings to greatness, tough on “scroungers, stopping the boats) he announced three major policies: scrapping HS2, making smoking illegal and reforming 16-18 education.
I welcome the scrapping of HS2. Some of us have been arguing vigorously that it should never have been started ever since Gordon Brown announced it in 2009. It has been a vanity project from the beginning. Britain is a small island and does not need a high speed line. If we were to have one, just to show we could, then a line from from Scotland to London, had it started in the North, might have made it to Leeds and been some use.
But what we really need, and are now promised (but shall we actually get) is £30bn worth of conventional infrastructure connecting our towns and cities. Sadly it has taken 14 years and expenditure of £30bn or so on a white elephant, not to mention the destruction of precious and unique environments.
The reform of 16-18 years education is also to be welcomed, but how is it to be done? Sunak has decided that it is to be “knowledge based” which smells of rote learning. What is actually needed today and for the future is not “knowledge,” which is available on tap at the press on an internet button, but the skills to put it to use - “Critical thinking,” - which is possibly the last thing the Tories want, especially in regard to politics.
Rather than being imposed from the top by politicians who believe the young should learn what they did, the education establishment, the “blob” should be consulted. They would probably advise that what education most urgently needs are more Sure Starts, more teachers, sound buildings, less top-down interference, less testing and less tick-box bullying from OFSTED.
I also welcome the phasing-out of smoking, which is to include vaping. The obvious question is why the sale of vapes was ever permitted in the first place (along with plastic lawns.)
Sunak quite rightly claims that politics “isn’t working” and we the people are losing faith in it. He also claims, with some justification, that Labour under Sir Keir Starmer will continue with “the mixture as before” rather than bring about real change. For that we need:-
· 1.Serious constitutional reform, including PR and measures to enable parliament to control the executive, rather than vice versa. Rather than detailed proposals the progressive parties should promise to establish a Royal Commission or similar to agree and make proposals, This could involve seeking the advice of citizens’ assemblies.
· 2. A root and branch reform of our taxation system to make it fairer and skew it towards taxing “bads” rather than “goods” (see previous post.)
· 3. Measures to limit financial donations to political parties and achieve a more balanced press.
These would bring about the fundamental change Sunak recognises we urgently need. Bur the Tories will not propose them: they prefer the system as it is, skewed in their favour by the FPTP electoral system, executive control of parliament, and virtually unlimited support from rich individuals and the biased press.
Labour is too frightened to take up these causes.
The return of a goodly number of Liberal Democrat and Green MPs might provide the necessary steel.
1.Serious constitutional reform, including PR and measures to enable parliament to control the executive, rather than vice versa.
ReplyDeleteBut Parliament already has total control over the executive — Parliament can dismiss the executive at any time if 50% + 1 of the Members vote that they have no confidence in it.
What Parliament cannot do, and must not be allowed to do, is micromanage the executive. You can't run a country by committee — especially a committee of 650! Thing of it like a company where the executive is the CEO and Parliament is the Board. The Board appoints the CEO, who answers to the Board and the Board and can dismiss them at any time, but while the CEO is in post they are free to do as they see fit without the Board interfering.
Rather than detailed proposals the progressive parties should promise to establish a Royal Commission or similar to agree and make proposals, This could involve seeking the advice of citizens’ assemblies.
Of course anything which the Commission comes up with must not be implemented without being approved by a referendum, following the precedent set by the 2011 referendum n the Alternative Vote. The People must have a veto over major constitutional change.
3. Measures to limit financial donations to political parties and achieve a more balanced press.
Indeed, we could do with some more right-wing voices in the media.
Rather than being imposed from the top by politicians who believe the young should learn what they did, the education establishment, the “blob” should be consulted.
ReplyDeleteUm, it's the 'blob' who think the young should learn what they did — critical race theory, wokery, anti-Britishness, etc etc, all the things that the current generation of teachers were taught when they were training from the sixties and seventies onwards and which they are now trying to pass on to our poor children.
They would probably advise that what education most urgently needs are more Sure Starts, more teachers, sound buildings, less top-down interference, less testing and less tick-box bullying from OFSTED.
What education really needs is less Ofsted and instead a good dose of the market: instead of trying to detect shit schools by surprise inspections, which is the main purpose of Ofsted as it relates to schools, we should simply allow a free market in pupils and schools, where schools compete for the best pupils and pupils compete to get into the best schools. That way good schools will be popular and can expand as more parents want their children to go there, while shit schools will find they have no pupils and so go to the wall and have to shut down.
So as the best schools prosper and the bad schools are driven into the ground, the average school quality will increase.
Also the average teacher quality will increase, as the good schools will want to hire good teachers, and will be able to offer them a better working environment and better terms of employment, so incompetent teachers will find they can only get jobs at the bad schools; and then as the bad schools are shut down they will have to leave teaching and go work somewhere their skills are required instead, like McDonalds.