What will Keir Starmer and his colleagues learn from the disaster of their attempt to cut benefits?
Nothing! They never learn - every setback is because 'big boys did it and ran away', never because what they were trying to do was wrong in the first instance.
One policy area in particular is about to return the political conversation to the subject that defined last week’s fiasco: disability. Once again, Labour MPs from all wings of the party are feeling anxious and restless. Campaign groups and charities – not to mention the huge numbers of people who will be directly affected – fear the worst.
Of course they do! It’s how they stay relevant! If they can’t win people to their cause by terrifying them, they will fade into obscurity and who will pay the bills then?
The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, wants to reform England’s system of provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, or Send.
And it needs it - the growth in special measures for children attending school has been a meteoric rise; either we really are breeding more and more defective children, or there's a perk to the diagnosis of 'special needs' that parents are latching onto. Whichever it is, the sitaution can't be tolerated for much longer.
A new education white paper will be published in the autumn. Phillipson says the government needs to “think very differently”. She wants to reverse a trend that took root in the Tory years and prioritise the inclusion of Send kids in mainstream schools.
So everyone's education is affected! Just the sort of thing you'd ecxpect from a Labour government, the one's that cannot let go of the failed concept of comprehensive education (except when it comes to their own offspring, of course!)
One of the big teaching unions has already said that without a commensurate increase in day-to-day schools spending, the plans could put “extreme pressure” on teachers.
How totally unexpected!
There are whispers about families who currently have EHCPs being allowed to keep them, while in the future, kids with similar needs would be waved away, something that threatens a stereotypical two-tier model, another element with worrying echoes of the benefits disaster.
Why not? We already have a two-tier justice system, what better testament to Starmer's (hopefully short) rreign to have an educational sysyem similarly blighted..? Of course, the likelihood is he'll back down when faced with opposition as he's already done so many times.
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