Today’s PMQs won’t go down in history as Sir Keir Starmer’s finest half hour, with the PM losing marks over his performance on education. It seems the Labour politician has reverted to his old ways, with yet another Starmer U-turn making an appearance at today’s session. Quelle surprise…
Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch went in hard on the schools bill, blasting the Labour lot for wanting to row back on measures that propelled English schools to the top of Western league tables. ‘This bill is an act of vandalism,’ Badenoch declared. Pulling no punches, the Tory leader went on:
It is wrecking a cross-party consensus that lasted for decades… This bill is the worst of socialism, Mr Speaker, and isn’t it deprived children in England who will pay the price?
Shots fired…
And when the discussion turned to the subject of academies, Sir Keir was left a little flustered. ‘We introduced academies,’ the Labour leader insisted. ‘We committed to them and we’re driving standards up.’ Er, does that really paint the full picture? Mr S would point readers to an article written by Starmer for the Times Education Supplement magazine during his party’s leadership race in 2020. Pushing an anti-academy argument, he claimed:
The academisation of our schools is centralising at its core and it has fundamentally disempowered parents, pupils and communities. That’s why I want all schools to be democratically accountable to their local communities, not to politicians in London. We need our schools to be working together as one family, to serve their communities, rather than competing against each other.
How times change. It’s yet another U-turn for Starmer Chameleon to add to his portfolio…
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