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There is not much consistency in Britain’s handling of the pandemic, but one rule applies at all times: There is no scenario so bad that it cannot get worse with Gavin Williamson in charge of schools.
The closure of classrooms demoralizes parents, teachers and children. The prospect of canceled exams for the second year adds to the stress. Months of interrupted education will hurt a generation. The poorest families will bear the deepest scars. There is no quick political solution, but it is possible to imagine that there are remedies. The government cannot fix everything, but it must be able to do something.
It is not the task itself that leads to despair, but the identity of the man whose job it is to complete it. Williamson’s track record allows only the expectation of failure. The unknown element is whether you will inflict the damage through negligence or through stronger sabotage.
Will your next adventure in mismanagement resemble the test scores fiasco last summer, when the education department had months to prepare for a predictable problem and was still ambushed? Or is it something more proactively malicious, like when he threatened to take legal action against city councils that wanted to close schools before Christmas, thus forcing them to stay open for a few free days of viral proliferation?
An education secretary possessing even the weakest scruples could, in recent weeks, face practical challenges: buying laptops for remote learning, equipping places to safely teach children who cannot stay home. Instead, English schools closed less than a day early, after a Christmas break during which principals were told that the priority was to organize Covid tests that would allow them to stay open. They opened, but only for one day: an additional round of infections before the U-turn.
Resources and goodwill have been wasted with a thoroughness that would make more sense as deliberate villainy – a plot to induce stress in the staff room – except that Williamson is unable to implement such an effective conspiracy.
Administrative insufficiency is compounded by the lack of passion for the portfolio. There is no evidence that the secretary of state has a notion of what education is for, or how it fits into any larger national history. His only known experience in the field is having gone to school once. And it’s unclear how much attention he was paying then.
Teachers despise him. It has even alienated the moderate wing of the unions. It’s never easy for conservative ministers to gain trust in the staff room, but Williamson has fulfilled the caricature of an ideological provocateur with spiteful taste, labeling teachers as slackers and saboteurs.
In a recent survey When front-line staff were asked who they would trust in the decision about whether it was safe to enter the classroom, Williamson came in the last distant place: miles behind scientific advisers, local authorities, Public Health England, principals and teachers. unions. Respondents were allowed to check multiple boxes, yet the secretary of education got only 1% of the votes.
The rebellious side of his character is notorious in the government. It’s not unusual for aides and MPs to whisper nasty things to journalists about ministers, but the acrimony of what his own party spills on Williamson is unique and hardly printable. The kinder stories focus only on his abject ineptitude, but most include chapters on cunning, duplicity, and revenge. He is said to define himself as a Machiavellian operator with a flamboyant immaturity that undermines any plan he may undertake: a homage to House of Cards in a cruel, humorless antics.
All of which begs the question of why he’s in the cabinet. Williamson’s incompetence was no secret. He failed in defense before getting his hands on education. His memorable contributions in the field of security were the exhortation on the playground that Russia should “go and shut up”, and his dismissal by Theresa May after the leak of secret information. He denied it, but misfortune continued to mount when, just three months later, Johnson hired Williamson for the education position.
The only credentials the new prime minister cared about were loyalty and a willingness to defend the most extreme Brexit. Williamson had been a holdover from David Cameron and an advocate of May’s doomed deal when she was his benefactress. When May resigned, Williamson took a tougher position instantly and unapologetically, like a true mercenary. It did not take Johnson long to see the usefulness of a man as scarce in principle as himself. What could happen to schools was never a consideration.
By now, however, Johnson must see that repetitive failure in that department damages his own reputation. The pandemic has created countless painful dilemmas for Downing Street, but the choice between keeping the current education secretary and putting just about anyone else in charge is at the easier end of the spectrum. The argument that a crisis needs staff coherence does not apply when the person in question is a walking locomotive throwing more crises.
A popular view at Westminster last year, when Williamson was barely showing the full extent of his futility, was that Johnson kept him in order to euthanize him at a later date. The reviled minister could absorb more public disgrace before being dismissed. But the rag is now saturated and stale. Another theory is that Williamson has a sinister influence dating back to his time as whip boss: that he knows where bodies are buried, having served as an executioner and undertaker.
Perhaps Johnson avoids firing people for incompetence for fear of pointing out that competition is important and that success in politics should be measured by the execution of capable policies. That is not the prime minister’s favorite test.
Williamson will leave, eventually, once the stench of having him around overcomes Johnson’s reluctance to deal with messes. It is difficult to predict when that moment will come. The prime minister’s nose is used to the smell of bad government, but he can see other people backing off.
Firing the secretary of education would not automatically make things better. But at least it would remove a compelling reason to keep expecting the worst.
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