In 2021 the Department for Education calculated that more than 300 schools needed to be repaired every year to deal with the possible catastrophic collapse of the postwar concrete with which they had been built. Jonathan Slater, who was the department’s top civil servant from May 2016 to August 2020, told the BBC that civil servants thought that the Treasury would only pay for 200 annually. But they did not count on the penny-pinching of Rishi Sunak. He would end up funding only 50 rebuilds a year. At the weekend the austerity chickens came home to roost. More than 100 schools have been shut fully or partly due to risky reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac). Hundreds more potentially face the same fate.
Mr Sunak says he’s not to blame. His explanation that his plans were in line with school capital spending over the past decade misses the point. If as chancellor you dismiss a warning that later turns out to be true, then the fault is yours. The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, then had to apologise for claiming pungently that her “work” went unacknowledged. Labour gleefully alighted on the chaos. But, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies points out, capital spending on schools is half its 2010 peak. Sir Keir Starmer is right to attack the Tories for incompetence. However, he has not pledged the extra billions of pounds needed to fix the problem.
Nor does Sir Keir’s shadow cabinet shake-up, which sees six Blair-era special advisers in this top team, inspire a belief that Labour will think new thoughts. Yet that is what is needed. Instead, the Labour leader demoted the soft left – including Lisa Nandy and Jon Ashworth – from his top team. The reshuffle highlights the crisis in centrism that bedevils western democracies. Rory Stewart, a former Tory cabinet minister and thoughtful critic of his own creed, told the Today programme: “It is a mistake to pretend that you can go back to the 1990s and that everything was fine under Tony Blair.” Yet that is where the Labour leadership seems to find itself today.
If Labour finds itself in government, it will discover that settling strikes, reducing NHS backlogs and cutting poverty levels will be expensive, contentious and time-absorbing. Joe Biden is said to inspire Labour. But the US president – and his party – made big offers on the campaign trail that Democrats have delivered on in office. Mr Biden rejected “trickle-down” economics. Instead his administration raised taxes and widened the budget deficit to support its pro‑green fiscal expansion. This has seen the US economy grow and wages rise. Sir Keir champions an economic orthodoxy that Mr Sunak cleaves to and that Mr Biden repudiates.
Labour is wrong not to call on higher taxes on property and wealth to support public investment and growth, and reduce inequality. It ought to listen to its economic advisers who say the party should drop damaging arbitrary fiscal rules.
There is hope: Labour is viewed as better placed than the Tories to tackle the cost of living crisis; the toxic Brexit divide is fading; and social attitudes continue to become more liberal. Labour’s top ranks include soft-left standard-bearers Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband, both of whom hold key portfolios. Being able to adapt and innovate is also no bad thing. Labour’s tendency to change course might even prove to be a blessing. But only if its leadership is humble, pluralist and open-minded.