THINGS get off to a weird start this week, with Keir Starmer offering his warm congratulations and broadest smirk to Boris Johnson following his surprise wedding. “I have to say I admire the way they managed to keep it secret,” he adds with a laugh, and for a moment it seems like he’s going to follow up with a jibe about secret Covid contracts or the like. But no – phew! – moving on, he’s got a question to ask about education.
He wants to know why the UK Government is opting for a “half-hearted” catch-up plan that risks failing hundreds of thousands of children. These are not his words, but those of the PM’s now former education adviser, Sir Kevan Collins, who last week resigned saying the action being taken “does not even come close” to being adequate.
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Apparently the Labour leader needs to brush up on his maths, because billions upon billions are being spent and this adds up to the biggest tutorial programme anywhere in the world. Hmm. Does it though? Starmer says the funding adds up to about £50 per child per year in England, or £310 over four years, and it sounds like he’s had his calculator out.
“In addition to the £14bn I’ve already referred to there was already another £1.5bn of catch-up – this is a £3bn catch-up plan just for starters!” It’s almost as if Johnson thinks just shouting out numbers of billions will fool everyone into thinking his opponent's figures can’t be right.
Interestingly, Starmer makes a point of laying the blame for this penny-pinching with Rishi Sunak, one of the few government figures who emerged unscathed – indeed, enhanced – from Dominic Cummings’s marathon session of evidence-giving about the handling of the pandemic.
“The Chancellor’s decision – and I assume it was the Chancellor’s decision, it always is – to hold back the investment that’s needed is a completely false economy,” says Starmer, ensuring he’s got that on the record so the next Prime Minister can’t carry on the “Captain Hindsight” name-calling.
Johnson resorts to his usual tricks of slagging off Labour for policies that are tangentially related to the general subject matter, but not answering the actual question – “At the last election, Mr Speaker, they even campaigned to get rid of Ofsted!” – and then demanding Starmer support the very programme he’s just spent two questions saying is woefully inadequate.
Mr Speaker isn’t interested in hearing about tangentially relevant stuff, which is an odd interjection since he allows the European sodding Medicines Agency to be brought up every damn week. The PM responds that he’ll bring up the Ofsted stuff if he bloody well wants to.
Starmer then confusingly pivots to asking about foreign aid and the Middle East peace process, and the Speaker gets so weary of the response that he accidentally shouts out “Felicity Kendall!” instead of the name of the Tory MP who’s waiting for her turn.
READ MORE: Boris Johnson warned his foreign aid cuts will ‘cast a shadow’ over G7
Ian Blackford starts his turn by saying he’s “sure we're all looking forward to the European championships kicking off later this week".
Don’t be so sure, Ian! Some of us are looking forward to it all being over.
But perhaps this was just a device with which to make pointed reference to Scotland as a country, which in turn requires the PM to acknowledge all the “home nations” – in flagrant breach of the instruction civil servants have reportedly been given to avoid such divisive talk.
Blackford’s question is about foreign aid cuts – another of those subjects that the PM like to address by shouting out impressive-sounding numbers. He’s also taken to asserting that the recent local election results mean the UK supports every last thing his government has done (while of course the Scottish result should definitely not be taken as a vote in favour of indyref2).
Talk about foreign aid cuts is “leftie propaganda that you hear from people opposite,” he says, apparently forgetting that Theresa May is sitting right behind him. Blackford wins a hearty laugh by pointing this out while the ex-PM chortles behind her mask, then he drills down into the deadly serious impacts of foreign aid cuts in a time of global crisis.
The PM’s response? “Absolutely disgraceful.” Blackford’s question, that is, not his government’s behaviour.
The world’s poorest should just be grateful to have UK-made vaccines, and not greedily expect things like clean water too. We should be proud of what “this country” is doing, apparently.
Unfortunately for Johnson, it doesn’t take catch-up maths lessons for most people to determine that 0.5% is less than 0.7%. That “leftie propaganda” claim will not be forgotten, and the cuts won’t be forgiven.
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