WELL, IT REALLY will serve Tony Blair right if he loses it, because of all his fannying around. A four-page introduction to the White Paper last autumn, in the Prime Minister’s name, flourishing freedom and choice in schools, raised the stakes unnecessarily high over the education Bill. The introduction by Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State, was a quarter the length and immeasurably more restrained.
Mr Blair’s words were, and were designed to be, a red rag to the Labour Left. The predictable onslaught that followed from the backbenches hid the truth about the White Paper: it was deeply baffling, full of contradiction and lacking the teeth necessary to make Mr Blair’s vision of parents in the driving seat a reality. It is so unclear what the benefits will be that, as the Bill heads for its dramatic showdown in Parliament tonight, only two dozen schools have actually shown any interest at all in becoming self-governing trusts. Headteachers have played along with too many of these schemes in the past to leap into the latest bright idea with any enthusiasm.
Meanwhile an intelligent assault on the Prime Minister’s proposals from sensible opponents he could not ignore, led by the likes of the moderate former Education Secretary Baroness Morris of Yardley, has left Mr Blair with a Bill that neither does quite what one suspects he wanted it to do, nor carries the support of his backbenches. It will be small comfort to Mr Blair that it has won the support of Lord Hattersley, backing it because the Bill, unlike the White Paper, for the first time forces schools to act in accordance with the Department for Education’s admissions code, and bans pre-admission interview. Academic selection will therefore be all but eliminated, Lord Hattersley thinks.
If he is right (I believe academic selection somehow finds its way through any system), there is no very good reason for Labour MPs to continue to oppose this Bill tonight. But equally there are very many good reasons for Tory MPs not to support it. Not least, for instance — and I haven’t heard anyone argue this yet — because the concept of choice between schools only works in urban and not predominantly Conservative rural areas where 20 or 30 miles may separate two “ competing” schools. But just as Mr Blair set himself up for a confrontation with the “Labour Left” and has been stuck with it ever since, David Cameron established himself early on in a position of “reasonable opposition” in which he seems to have got entrenched.
Before it was clear that Mr Blair would lose the Bill without Conservative support, clever boys in the Tory backrooms reckoned it would look good for the Opposition to agree with Labour on a key reform with whose direction they broadly agreed. The idea of constructive opposition was new. It put Mr Blair in an uncomfortable position with his own MPs, being backed by the Conservative Party. Best of all, it wrongfooted the electorate’s assumptions about the Tories.
That was then, this is now. I think that Mr Blair will be more vulnerable tonight than he has been in any of his nine years in office. This legislation is absolutely central to his continuation in No 10 and, even after all the concessions, he cannot get his party to support it. The Prime Minister has made it clear that he has no problem in seeing his legislation passed only with Tory support. There is no plan that I can winkle out, however, for what would happen were his legislation not to be passed at all. Plenty of Mr Blair’s allies think he would have to resign.
Now Mr Cameron’s Conservatives may be a new type of opposition, but surely given the opportunity to kick the Prime Minister out of No 10, they should revert to being the old type of opposition, and do it. It would leave the handover of power within Labour in disarray, a new prime minister crowned not by Mr Blair as the natural heir to new Labour but by the Labour Left as the natural heir to its rebellion. What better start to Gordon Brown’s tenure could the Conservatives ask for? Mr Blair’s current plan would have Mr Brown instated next summer at No 10 for the right reasons at the right time with the right message. The Conservative Party might be able to disrupt all that tonight.
Mr Cameron’s advisers fear they would look opportunist were they suddenly to drop their support for the education Bill in tonight’s vote. That assumes that voters will remember or care about the whys and wherefores in the revolution that would follow, rather than simply relishing Goliath Blair’s bloody nose and applauding Mr Cameron for giving it to him.
The Conservatives are going to end up looking thoroughly opportunist anyway, and to no easily comprehensible end. They are planning to — get this — oppose the programme motion! That is, they are not going to oppose the Bill itself, but instead vote against the technical motion setting out the timetable for the Bill over the next few months, pushing debate over it into the summer! How very clever. How very sixth-form debating society.
The plan makes the Tories look both opportunistic and cowardly. If you really agree with the Bill, back it to the hilt tonight. If you don’t, kill it.
Ah, say the plan’s defenders, but then the Tory leadership can still vote against the Bill at a later stage. The education spokesman, David Willetts, said this week that the Government must be “very careful” not to give any more concessions to the Labour rebels or risk losing Conservative support. But a later about-turn by the Tories might be too late. Anything could happen between now and the summer, or autumn, or whenever that vote comes. Labour backbenchers may be persuaded or whipped into line if they are given further concessions, or if it becomes clear that this is a them (Tories) or us (Labour) situation; or Mr Blair might, say, have pricked their discontent by announcing the timetable for his departure.
Tonight is the only chance for Mr Cameron’s Conservatives. There is no other Bill existing or forthcoming upon which the Prime Minister’s authority and future so completely rest.
Were I the Leader of the Opposition, I know what I would do.
