It’s hardly a surprise that the Tories aren’t pushing ahead with plans for new grammar schools, and hardly a surprise that Education Secretary Justine Greening confirmed this quietly in a written answer to a parliamentary question. They neither want to cause an upset with a policy not universally supported by Tory MPs when they now have no majority to pass it, nor draw attention to the fact that the party can no longer be a radical reforming force in Parliament.
Greening wrote in an answer published today that ‘there was no education bill in the Queen’s Speech, and therefore the ban on opening new grammar schools will remain in place’. It is a pattern we will see again and again over the coming weeks: where Theresa May had claimed to have a reforming zeal, she will now quietly retreat, hoping only that her government can survive, not reform.
It wasn’t clear whether May was mooting grammar school reforms for policy or political reasons. There is no evidence that these selective schools improve social mobility, and so it seemed that picking this policy in the early days of her premiership was as much about saying she wasn’t David Cameron as anything else. Now the election result has confirmed that this Prime Minister isn’t David Cameron: he at least managed to increase the number of seats his party held in two elections and even won a majority in the second.
Even in those halcyon days of having a majority, May always talked about reform, but gave less of an impression that she might get those reforms done. In this, she was more similar to David Cameron. Both, for instance, talked a good game on mental health, promising to reduce the stigma and ensure that treatment for mental illness has ‘parity of esteem’ with physical conditions in the NHS. But today a report from the British Medical Association underlines that there is a vast difference between rhetoric and action. The doctors’ union found that the number of patients with mental illnesses who are forced to travel long distances for treatment has risen by 40 per cent in the past two years, with 5,876 people having to leave their local areas for treatment in 2016-17. This included a 587-mile trip from Somerset to the Scottish Highlands.
As Fraser writes in the latest Spectator, the Conservative party desperately needs to work out what it stands for – and what policies it wants to pursue passionately. This is much more easily done in opposition, where a party can lick its wounds after a bad election result. But some Tory MPs I’ve spoken to today feel that May’s weakness as Tory leader can be the party’s strength as it rebuilds. ‘She can get on with running the government – which she is good at – and the party can get on with working out what it wants to do in the future,’ says one senior backbencher. In other words, May is no longer the party’s future, so it can get on with thinking about what it really wants to do on schools, the NHS, and so on without her.
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