If you believed the spin George Osborne’s speech today on the battle for public service reform was only about the Cameron Conservatives being the supposed ‘heir to Blair’. It wasn’t. It was far more than that. The trouble is that few Tory supporters or members will ever read it and understand that it was an out and out attack on the creeping ‘left wingery’ of the Labour Party after Blair and how the new Prime Minister will continue to be a roadblock to reforming our ailing public services.
The reason this is important is because of the fallout from the Graham Brady resignation over grammar schools. Tory Party members are nervous. Some think that their Party is being taken away from them. It doesn’t matter whether they are right or wrong – that’s what some of them think.
The Brady resignation should never have been allowed to happen. Graham Brady had been a more than competent performer in his two Shadow roles, covering schools and latterly Europe. Good on the media, he successfully managed to hold the hordes at bay over the failure to withdraw from the EPP, as Cameron had promised in his leadership campaign.
Graham Brady had a long track record of fighting for grammar schools. He was the product of one and his Altrincham & Sale constituency is full of them. It’s one of the few constituencies to have a fully selective school system. Strangely, the exam results there in both the grammars and high schools achieve consistently higher exam results than elsewhere. Brady has been a doughty defender of their interests as the local constituency MP.
So when David Willetts made his speech two weeks ago Brady was first in line to give due notice to the whips that he wouldn’t be silenced on the issues. But when, on Monday, he went public with a further defence of the grammar school system, he not only got a private dressing down from the chief whip – the Tory press office made it public. This is unprecendented. And no only that, they then briefed anonymously that he would be sacked in the July reshuffle.
Maintaining party discipline is never easy – it doesn’t which party you are dealing with. But it is best done behind closed doors and not in the public gaze. Conducting themselves in this way has meant that the Tory front bench has needlessly lost a good man and a good media performer. It must not happen again.
