The Labour Government

[bluenova]

No serious analysis has occurred, as you well know.

That's not an argument.

Unless pretty much every local authority across the country is lying about their school capacity, and the number of pupils on their rolls, then what more do you want?

ps.

EDIT: Here's the FT "non-serious" analysis, which is a pretty straightforward plotting of DoE statistics. Despite using a Lib Dems style graph, which makes it look worse than the reality, there is no doomsday scenario: https://www.ft.com/content/31460ce0-c0ba-4c1d-8006-43cb698234e2

Here's the IFS's "non-serious" analysis which suggests a movement of between 3-7% of pupils, significantly within the spare capacity of the state sector, and easily able to be absorbed, even if some areas are multiples of those figures.

 

[threespires]

When the attrition rate from private to public proves highly uneven across the country, and particular councils are put under real pressure to find additional places in schools that are already oversubscribed, the policy will simply appear as a completely unnecessary own goal.

Completely unnecessary in the sense that the policy has negligible fiscal benefits (if any), and it will simply risk increases in class sizes and in fact a deterioration in the quality of education provided in the impacted state schools.

Given your grievances about the numerous education policy changes of recent years and the uncertainty created around the sector, would you not have preferred a period of calm and careful planning, without the distraction created by an ideologically driven policy? In particular a policy which is likely to offer little to nothing from a fiscal perspective?

Starmer has made a big thing about putting the country ahead of party politics but I’m afraid he’s fallen at the first hurdle here.

I would indeed like calm and considered policy and I think we have one here. Is it an educational game changer? No of course not but it's a bit of low hanging fruit that's not complicated to implement. I've already posted previously about the fact that whilst what it offers fiscally is a drop in the ocean it will still make a positive material effect to a least a proportion of children.

I think it is a thought through policy, as I say it's not high risk and the likely level of disruption/backfire is minimal. If the armageddon you posit comes to fruition I will be first to hold my hands up and say you were right.

The labour party has already shown it won't operate education in an idealogical fashion unlike the previous government. There are loads of policies that in an ideal world would be reversed but the amount of disruption or cost involved means that they/we we will just have to suck it up. An ideologically driven government would start unpicking those anyway but that's not what they are going to do. I'm not particularly happy about this at a philosophical level but I accept it shows a degree of maturity and grown up government.

You miss my main point about the politics of it, which was that the right needs to start picking it's battles. The right has negligible political capital at the moment, it is seen as an ill disciplined, incompetent rabble. This is not good as the country needs an effective functioning opposition. Wild thrashing at everything the new government does is not opposition and only makes it look bitter and faintly ridiculous. It needs to indulge in a bit of introspection and come back with some sensible opposition.

 

[meltonblue]

I think the one thing that we can be sure of is that the movement of pupils out of the private sector will not prove uniform across the country, and so talk of spare capacity across the state sector as a whole is redundant.

The numbers are nowhere near enough for it to have that big an impact. The capacity over the next few years due to declining birth rate is due to be higher than the entire population of private schools.

 

[shemnel]

I can't help but think this is the "if we don't talk about it, it will go away" attitude. People talk about class because the last 14 years has seen the biggest transfer of wealth from working people to the ownership class in living memory. We should be talking about class. It's the biggest factor that determines someone's outcomes in life and this is increasingly the case. Wages of workers have stagnated and ownership of assets (like a house) has flatlined at the same time that the wealth of the rich has exploded, and yet some people still don't see a link between these two facts.

But if we are going to talk about it, it would perhaps be better to talk about it in terms of people who work for a living, and people who live off the income from assets they own. Because the last 14 years has massively favoured the latter group, yet any attempt to redress this is labelled 'class warfare' as if that's a bad thing. Class warfare has already been quietly happening, and the upper classes are winning.

I was going to refute your first paragraph with your second paragraph. So, thanks!

 

[TinFoilHat]

Robot Reeves being accused of being in with the unions by the BBC/Sky over public sector pay is hilarious.

 

[Scaley]

Three weeks ago they were telling us Labour don't have a plan

The illegal working blitz isn’t new, it just means that all the ICE teams across the UK coordinate on the same day and hit the same type of businesses and it was one of Sunak’s strategies, this has been rehashed to appear as something new, it isn’t. As for illegal working activity it takes place most days of the week anyway plus it makes sense to target car washes more in the Summer, ICE teams don’t need the Home Secretary to tell them that.

 

[Grassland Blue]

You're certainly on to something there worze, but all this happened on your crews watch.

Exactly. Visually encapsulated by the image of Rees - Mogg asleep in parliament.

 

[TinFoilHat]

The illegal working blitz isn’t new, it just means that all the ICE teams across the UK coordinate on the same day and hit the same type of businesses and it was one of Sunak’s strategies, this has been rehashed to appear as something new, it isn’t. As for illegal working activity it takes place most days of the week anyway plus it makes sense to target car washes more in the Summer, ICE teams don’t need the Home Secretary to tell them that.

That's fair enough.

It's been announced to try and neuter Nigel and Cruella.

 

[johnnytapia]

Public sector pay recommended at 5% but government only budgeted for 3%! Be interesting to see what happens, as an aside since I’ve retired if the next pay deal goes through the fire service will have had a 17% pay rise in 3 years! I didn’t get that in 20 years.

You were too busy playing snooker:-)

 

[Scaley]

That's fair enough.

It's been announced to try and neuter Nigel and Cruella.

I’m no fan of Sunak but he just gave a name to a strategy that was already in place, I firmly expect Yvette Cooper to pop up during some of this illegal working activity wearing her stab vest for a photo op and it’s not something I have any beef with as it’s what most politicians do so that’s fair enough. At the end of the day the Rwanda plan has been cancelled which gives Labour some credit in my book. I haven’t read the article but I can tell you that Labour want to focus on the removal of high harm offenders of which there are many so again a step in the right direction for me and letting the ICE teams concentrate on what most staff want to do and that’s protect the public and help the vulnerable no matter what their immigration status.