Sorry kids but the "adults in the room" are idiots

IS there any more damning indictment of austerity politics than the fact that thousands of kids are unable to return to school because of very real fears that buildings might fall down on their heads?

The crumbling of our public services is no longer a cute metaphor from hand-wringing "lefties" intent on doing the country down but a stone cold fact. Classrooms across England and an unknown number of other buildings are at risk of collapse.

It is true enough that even the most sure-footed government might be floored by the infamous "events" former PM Harold Macmillan once spoke of.

Only there's a curious pattern in the multiple crises gripping Britain today; the fact that the flashing lights and sirens were ignored by ministers. The events did not so much arrive unannounced but spent years loudly clearing their throats in the hope that someone sensible might sit up and notice.

Fortunately for our current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, in this case of crumbling concrete over pupils' heads, it was in fact a now departed former Chancellor who had swatted aside calls for increased replacement of dangerous school buildings.

Unfortunately that Chancellor just happened to be him, when he was living next door to his current place of residence just two years ago. 

If he knows his political history and he presumably does because it's one of those proper university subjects that he loves to talk about, the PM may recall how his idol Margaret Thatcher was famously skewered by the grey-haired and bespectacled Geoffrey Howe.

It was another mild-mannered looking man who this morning calmly twisted the knife into Sunak.
Former top civil servant Jonathan Slater told how the Treasury had taken the decision to halve the number of school replacements per year despite clear signs in the data that structural issues posed "a critical risk to life" if action was not taken.

Indeed, one primary actually had a lump of something large and heavy come crashing down in 2018, which rather suggests this was not a hypothetical risk dreamt up by hysterical teaching unions or health and safety fanatics but the sort of thing which probably demanded attention actually.

The tremor of indignation in Mr Slater's voice that repair budgets were in actual fact cut speaks of a man dismayed at the obstinacy he encountered. After all, hadn't Boris Johnson promised a new era of big-spending? Weren't we due a public services dividend after Brexit? It seems not.

Sunak has brushed aside criticisms that he was complicit in the crisis with an insistence that the reduced set of schemes he signed-off were "completely in line with what we have always done."

He said this with all the conviction of a small child who, having plucked the wrong straw in a high-stakes game of Kerplunk, had brought down an avalanche of marbles and seemed convinced that if they looked bemused enough those watching wouldn't draw obvious conclusions between actions and consequences. 

But given that Mr Slater's officials had initially called for 300-400 replacements a year, eventually requested 200, only to ultimately end up with 50, Sunak might want to brush up on the maths skills he speaks so passionately about.

Although he is perhaps right to note that the fiscal restraint he showed at the Treasury is fairly consistent with Tory policy over the past 13 years.

Sunak might of course be tempted to pass the buck to the Conservatives' so-called "big brain" Michael Gove, who scrapped the £55 billion Building Schools for the Future programme more than a decade ago. Although rather unfortunately he's still a senior member of government.

Perhaps keener to point the finger was incumbent Education Secretary Gillian Keegan who, in an off-camera tirade, took a swipe at those who had hitherto "sat on their arses" - leaving her to clear-up the mess.

The arses she had in mind, though unnamed, are perhaps some of her predecessors now warming the Commons' backbenches.

Forgive me for the unpleasantness of bringing Tory backsides to mind, but it's worth remembering that Keegan is in fact the fifth MP in the job since last July. Of those ministers, two didn't manage two months at the department and one, Michelle Donelan, did two days before coming to the unfortunate conclusion that Boris Johnson had gone doolally and hastily resigning.

Keegan, to her credit, has lasted longer, although given her snarky shot at colleagues has since gone viral how much longer might be a pertinent question.

The car-crash over school buildings of course cuts to the heart of Tory short termism, hacking billions out of budgets and assuming the costs and consequence will never catch-up with you - a rather vain hope for a party which has a frustrating knack of securing long spells in power.

Even now of course the small state free marketeers are in denial that slashing capital and revenue spending over the course of 13 years has not so much proven tough medicine but pure poison.

It was left to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to explain - with the sort of mathematical aplomb that would do his boss proud - that it was wrong to conclude that spending billions less than we used to on things we presumably once considered pretty important could possibly have any negative consequences.

The trouble with that the revolving door between the government benches and the ex-ministers/public speakers' circuit is that a lot of old faces tend to show uncharacteristic candour in their brief breaks from high office.

Gove, for instance, previously acknowledged one of his biggest mistakes was the dismemberment of the school-building scheme (for context this particular error of judgement was after he'd done all that coke but before he was filmed throwing some shapes in an Aberdeen nightclub). 

Hunt meanwhile, though apparently one of the dwindling number of Tories never to have run the Department for Education, did have the health job for a fair while and let slip during his sabbatical from cabinet that failing to boost the NHS workforce was probably not the ideal preparation for a pandemic.

While something of an understatement, it made more sense than yesterday's bone-headed refusal to accept that hollowing out even the largest and most critical of government departments was probably, in hindsight, not a great idea.

Labour is right to point out that "the chickens are coming home to roost" and by sweeping aside concerns about urgent spending requirements - it's fair to say that the risk of six-year-olds being buried under rubble is not exactly a trivial request for investment - the Tories have left a trail of carnage.

But Keir Starmer, who like Sunak himself is sometimes given rather too much credit as a serious political operator, seems increasingly confused about how he's going to fix all this.

With both he and his Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, constantly impressing the need for iron financial discipline it's hard to say how a Treasury under their stewardship would not bat aside similarly impassioned pleas for extra cash.

With the apparent common sense of fiscal conservatism having crumbled as badly as the RAAC roofs to which it denied money, it seems a nonsense for Labour to insist it can fix all this without pouring huge amounts of money into the system.

To claim that we get the desperately needed resources by spurring growth rather assumes that this hasn't been the plan of successive governments for almost 15 years - with next to little to show for it. 

And to suggest that reform can be some magical alternative to the tax and spend strategy that Starmer baulks at looks hopelessly naive. Urgent building repairs don't get dealt with via "blue sky thinking" they get sorted with the cold, hard cash that Mr Slater's data showed was so necessary.

Would Labour be willing to handwave away the worries of officials as blithely as Sunak? Since its criticism suggests it would not then it needs to start to question whether it would be better for its self-imposed fiscal rules to give way before canteen roofs do.