Labour must beware celebrating a U-turn which in reality is a swerve before the Conservative coalition carries on its destructive journey.
The desire to claim a victory in politics is perfectly understandable, a shadow minister straining to claim the scalp of a minister in David Cameron’s austerity coalition. But the spin doctor who resides in Downing Street knows all the public relations tricks, particularly how to axe a service without – he hopes – anyone noticing.
The Government of private schoolboys backtracking partially on slashing state school sport showed how Cameron’s playing this game. Michael Gove, who has really been found out in office, a Tory talked up by the media in opposition as the brightest of Conservatives who in power is a dunce, was forced to ditch October’s plan to scrap the £162 million school sport partnerships in England credited with getting more young people active.
Instead, before the Christmas parliamentary recess, the Education Secretary announced that he had thought again and found £112 million to keep 450 schemes going. That’s still a £50 million cut.
And £47 million of the £112 million is guaranteed only until the summer of this year, while the other £65 million covers 2011 to 2013.
So sport in state schools will still go ‘down the Swanee’, but Cameron has created the impression that he listened and heard then acted. I fear all he did was deflect political flak ahead of the 2012 London Olympic Games.
The same trick was played by Cameron, again with Gove the fall guy, over the axing of the successful scheme to get parents reading to young children.
Funding of the Booktrust was to be axed, all £13 million of public cash to be withdrawn when it was braced for a cut of “only” 20 per cent.
Writers including Philip Pullman and Andrew Motion, accused the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats of harming the education of kids as well as denying them the joys of hearing and reading stories.
The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, coined the phrase “book snatcher” to embarrass Cameron with an echo of the “milk snatcher” tag which dogged Margaret Thatcher years after she had cancelled the bottles in schools.
The result was a joint statement from the Booktrust and Department for Education which confirmed the current financial support would expire at the end of March and a new, as yet unspecified, deal would be struck.
The odds are funding will be considerably lower and the scheme will be unable to continue in its current form unless a sugar daddy or mummy steps in to pay for the books. But Cameron, again, gave the impression he’d saved it when what comes next will not be the same.
The U-turn which in reality is a slight right bend before curving back in the old direction is a smart trick by Cameron who is proving a smooth operator in Downing Street.
It allows the Prime Minister to appear reasonable when he’s anything but, offering temporary reprieves on relatively small issues while forging ahead with the big ticket cuts – and huge tax rises, particularly the £13 billion VAT hike the Tory leader declared he had “absolutely no plans” to introduce during the general election campaign.
The human jelly who proved difficult to pin to the wall before May 2010 should be easier to nail in Number 10. He’s a Thatcherite unable to escape the consequences, as Miliband called them with what I trust was intended to be sarcasm, of neo-liberal policies which will break Britain for millions of families.
Higher joblessness, squeezed living standards and rising poverty will be laid at Cameron’s door. But Miliband needs to avoid claiming glorious victories when Cameron is using smoke and mirrors to hoodwink the electorate.
My name is Kevin Maguire and I’m enjoying Tony Blair’s book. To admit a fondness for A Journey is, in many Labour circles, a weakness akin to alcoholism or gambling addiction.
Yet whatever its faults, and the faults of the man himself, it’s a good read. Self-serving, of course, as most autobiographies tend to be. But it’s highly readable with a number of unexpected insights.
I flicked through Blair’s tome when it was published last summer, but only started reading it properly over Christmas. Blair always considered Gordon Brown to his left and there is a hilarious passage in which the author describes how he might have gone directly into money-making if he’d not entered Parliament while Brown, had he too not become an MP, would probably have run a public service.
As a definition of the differing political positions of the last two Labour Prime Ministers, it’s not a bad start.
And I’ve further bad news for Tribune subscribers. I liked Peter Mandelson’s book as well. In fact, it’s better than Blair’s. I’ve still to summon up the courage to open Beyond the Crash, Brown’s weighty effort.
