The school concrete crisis shows how Britain’s government is lurching towards its end.
A year after Liz Truss became prime minister, Britain’s government staggers to its inevitable end. Ministers can’t grasp how toxic the school RAAC concrete crisis is, and spend time deflecting blame. But the consequences of their failure may soon catch up with them.
Was it really just a year ago that Liz Truss became prime minister? Her seven-week carnival of chaos is the kind of traumatic memory many would like to submerge.
The catastrophe of her minuscule tenure is all the more remarkable for its first fortnight being taken up with mourning for the late Queen. So, really, it took Truss just 5 weeks to drive the economy off a cliff, shatter international confidence in Britain, and prove what many already suspected — that she was never actually up to the job.
Rishi Sunak was meant to represent the overdue arrival of adults, bringing order to an administration increasingly resembling a feral nursery.
But Sunak and Truss share a common problem — presiding over a government in its death throes, too self-obsessed to pause to consider the depressing crisis of daily life in a Britain under its control since 2010.
As parents worry whether their children will safely return from their crumbling classrooms, ministers moan that no-one ever thanks them for doing such a great job.
The “not me, Gov”-ernment
Few of us had heard of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete a few weeks ago, but ministers certainly should have.
The first warnings about the stability of RAAC-built structures date back decades. They were repeated through the 90s and early 00s, but the danger became terrifyingly real five years ago with the collapse of a school roof in Gravesend.
Thankfully, it happened on a Saturday night rather than a Monday morning, and five months later it prompted an order to schools to carry out safety checks.
That request was repeated more than two years later, when questionnaires were finally sent out, trying to ascertain the extent of the problem. Action, yes, but hardly urgent.
A year ago, officials were told RAAC-based buildings were liable to collapse. Four months ago, the Department for Education identified close to 600 schools in England potentially at risk, while admitting more than 8,000 others still hadn’t been checked — five years after those checks were initially ordered.
Yet only now, days from the start of a new school year in England, are we told some will not be able to open. There is still no accurate list of affected schools, no timetable for repairs, no plan for how children will navigate yet more disruption to their education.
You would expect ministers to issue reassuring statements, promising no delays, no arguments over funding would stand in the way of keeping schoolchildren safe.
Instead, the Education Secretary scrabbles around looking for someone else to blame. Gillian Keegan’s department — the Department for Education — isn’t responsible for the safety of school buildings, she insists, pushing local authorities and academy trusts into the firing line instead.
They have, she implies, “sat on their arse and done nothing”, while her department has done a “fucking good job” for which we should all be grateful.
Keegan is the perfect ambassador for the “not me, Gov”-ernment — unwilling to take any responsibility for whatever problems may arise in a country it has run for more than 13 years.
Councils might point out their budgets have been repeatedly slashed, that spending on school building programmes rose until 2010, then fell, and kept falling.
If Gillian Keegan is looking for someone to blame, she might want to start with her boss. After all, it was Rishi Sunak’s Treasury that twice cut the school rebuilding budget, funding just 50 projects a year when officials were lobbying for hundreds.
The prime minister responds in exactly the same way as those underneath him — brittle and angry, insisting that whoever bears responsibility for this crisis, it’s definitely not him.
If Sunak, and the rest of his government, are aware of how this looks to the rest of the country, they appear powerless to do anything about it.
Nothing works anymore
But what has all this got to do with Liz Truss’ brief period as prime minister? Surely, we’ve moved on from that low point? It would be a brave person who claimed we’re now in a golden age of ruthless efficiency and professionalism.
Deep into its fourteenth year in power, the Conservative Party is on its knees, and we are witnessing the real-world consequences of a Government that knows time is almost up. Truss, Sunak — it doesn’t really matter who the ringmaster is, the clowns have already taken over the circus.
Around the world, Britain is increasingly seen as a country where nothing works anymore. Millions wait for healthcare, planes can’t land, rivers overflow with sewage, and school buildings could collapse at any moment.
Meanwhile, ministers whine about being held to account for critical safety flaws that have been known about for decades.
The RAAC crisis may have its roots in the past. But when you’ve been in power for more than a decade you can’t keep blaming other people. It’s on you.
The tattered remains of government lurch from one disaster to the next, mis-managed by people who seem to view The Thick Of It as a training video.
Eventually, they will stagger over the finish line — but how many more catastrophes must we endure before then?
