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| Friday, June 01, 2007 |
The assassination of Graham BradyThe Tory civil war on grammar schools and academic selection generally continues unabated. The resignation of Graham Brady, after the fatwa issued by Conservative HQ the previous day has not ended the matter. Curious, however, that Dominic Grieve appears to have got away with comments that imply that in his part of the world (Buckinghamshire) it might be necessary to build more grammar schools - and curiouser still that David Willetts seems to agree with him.So what was Graham Brady's crime? The member for Altrincham and Sale was principally concerned to protect the grammar schools in his constituency and borough. He wasn't talking about building any more, but he was concerned that the Conservative Party's turning away from the concept of academic selection might hand ammunition to those campaigners in his area which were seeking to abolish local grammar schools. This is not an unreasonable point. A policy of not abolishing but not supporting grammar schools in principle is effectively a policy of allowing them to wither on the vine. In any event, the new Conservative policy has now been shot through with so many holes that it is practically meaningless. As has been widely noted, including on this website, Mrs Thatcher's government built no new grammar schools, and Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher abolished plenty. The Conservative policy on this issue is as confused and shambolic as it has ever been. Graham Brady resigned on a point of principle, and as we don't see much of that these days, he deserves to be applauded for it. But it was nevertheless clear that he jumped before he was pushed, a reshuffle being expected next month when Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister. This was a political assassination by the Conservative Party hierarchy. An intelligent and reasonably articulate front bencher (by the unexacting standards of the modern Conservative Party, at any rate) has been sacrificed for one reason only: pour encourager les autres. |
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