Why has Labour chosen today to call for Gavin Williamson to resign as Education Secretary? This morning, shadow education secretary Kate Green released a statement saying ‘it is time for Gavin Williamson to go’, arguing that his ‘record throughout this pandemic has been shambolic’ and ‘he has bounced from one crisis to another without learning from his mistakes or listening to the parents, pupils and hard-working education staff who have been left to deal with the fallout’.
It is unlikely that he will stay in the job when Boris Johnson carries out his next reshuffle
It’s true that Williamson has had probably the worst pandemic out of any minister and that the rows and mistakes don’t seem to be going away, either. But even with that list of problems, there isn’t currently a head of steam behind calls for Williamson to go. So the timing seems odd. Even more so when you consider that this is the first time the party under Keir Starmer’s leadership has called for anyone to resign or be sacked. Up to this point, Labour has complained a lot about incompetence and half-backed various government policies — but has remained cautious of any bigger calls.
Party sources explain that Green needed to make the demand before the schools go back because ‘we need new leadership for families and kids’ and that the decision to call for a resignation came because of the importance of the brief in Starmer’s eyes. They may have a little while longer to wait before those schools do go back, though: today deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries told MPs that the suggested restart after the February half term should not be seen as a ‘fixed date’ and that ‘it is likely we will have some sort of regional separation of interventions’, raising fears not just of a delayed start date for all schools, but of a ‘postcode lottery’ where some children are able to get ahead of their peers in other parts of the country by being back in the classroom earlier.
Whenever the schools do return, the Education Secretary will have an even bigger piece of work to complete than his current test of trying to make remote learning work. The attainment gap has widened like a canyon over the past year and it should take up a vast amount of government energy and vision to close it again. Few Tory MPs, even those who think Williamson has become the scapegoat for wider problems in government, think he is the person to lead that programme. One senior backbencher says: ‘He’s too leaden-footed. There’s no lightness of touch or vision.’ Another says he has lost so much political capital in trying — and ultimately failing — to keep schools open and with his repeated U-turns on policies that he can never recover. ‘Gavin is now fatally weak and the unions and Department of Health are feasting on his weakness. He’s now not strong enough to resist the calls from the health lobby to lock everything down.’ It is unlikely that he will stay in the job when Boris Johnson carries out his next reshuffle, and as James says on our latest Coffee House Shots podcast, he would be happier in a party-facing role which suits his skillset as an operator. But this move, when it comes, won’t be in response to Labour calling today for Williamson to go, and it will be very difficult for the opposition to reap political credit when he does.
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