Anti-grammar schools cross-party alliance shows how split the Tories are

Last Updated: March 19, 2017By

Theresa May: cross-party alliance against grammar school expansion spells more political trouble [Image: Geoff Caddick/EPA].

This will shock you: Theresa May is good for democracy in the UK. Why? Because under her, the Tory Party is fracturing badly.

Here, we see that her insistence on trying to revive grammar schools has driven 30 Tories away from her, including former education secretary ‘Thicky’ Nicky Morgan.

Mrs May has been driven away from her grammar school project by more agile thinkers in the past, but keeps returning to it. This suggests that she doesn’t have any other ideas – or she wants to distract us all with something she knows will enflame public feeling.

This story shows us an unelected prime minister with no ideas, whose dull-minded drive to force an unpopular policy on the populace will drive a wedge between her and any thinking people left in the Tory Party. Good.

Theresa May’s personal crusade to expand the number of grammar schools is in serious jeopardy today as senior Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs unite in an unprecedented cross-party campaign to kill off the prime minister’s flagship education reform.

In a highly unusual move, the Tory former education secretary Nicky Morgan joins forces with her previous Labour shadow Lucy Powell and the Liberal Democrat former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg to condemn the plans as damaging to social mobility, ideologically driven and divisive.

The formation of their cross-party alliance against grammar school expansion, which is opposed by about 30 Tory MPs, spells yet more political trouble for May on the domestic front. Last week, chancellor Philip Hammond was forced by a revolt in his own party into a humiliating budget U-turn over national insurance rises for the self-employed, and Conservatives lined up to oppose planned cuts in school funding.

Source: Cross-party alliance takes on Theresa May over grammar schools | Education | The Guardian

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6 Comments

  1. Andy Carter March 19, 2017 at 1:42 pm - Reply

    Are you aware that you are hosting advertisements for holidays to Israel on your site? I would suggest finding a way to stop these adverts appearing if possible, as it amounts to supporting an apartheid state! Many thanks, Andy

    • Mike Sivier April 3, 2017 at 11:59 am - Reply

      As I understand it, Adsense sends adverts to readers, based on the readers’ own preferences. You are seeing ads for holidays to Israel, but that doesn’t mean anybody else is.
      I have tried to tune out other adverts in the past but, for some strange reason, they always seem to have disappeared.
      Also your description is rather vague.

  2. Barry Davies March 19, 2017 at 4:55 pm - Reply

    She’s nicknamed thicky for good reason, the grammar schools used to be the major avenues of social mobility before the political pygmies decided that everyone is equal but some are more equal than others and cut off this route by insisting on not very comprehensives. BTW could you actually list all the Prime ministers that have been elected by the public? I find this constant claim that she isn’t elected to be rather tiresome.

    • Mike Sivier March 19, 2017 at 5:28 pm - Reply

      Tiresome? Maybe. Facts often are.

    • linda March 19, 2017 at 10:13 pm - Reply

      who elected her the British people didn’t anyone with half a brain cell will tell you until the British people give her a mandate she is unelected .

  3. NMac March 21, 2017 at 9:08 am - Reply

    Grammar schools are the Tory way of keeping the working class from getting a good education. They may let in just a tiny few to make it look good, but it is really the Tory way of preventing the majority from getting higher education.

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