The metaphors keep piling up like a multiple car wreck. Or do they keep crashing down? It’s so hard to keep up. But you get the drift. Yet again, we have a government that’s out of control. That can do little else but bunker down in the cabinet room and pray for the roof not to fall in. Desperate for a break that just isn’t coming. Helpless to do anything but gradually disappear under the rubble of its own making. Policies in tatters and no sense of direction. Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete is just the latest in a long line of shitshows. This wasn’t the way Rishi Sunak had wanted to begin the new parliamentary session. He had been banking on drawing a line under previous failures and calling for a fresh start. To deliver a message of hope leading into next year’s general election. To make people grateful for all that the Tories had done. He was sick of the little people not appreciating him properly. Time for the country to bask in the hope of not being completely broke. Time to count your blessings that you hadn’t died on an NHS waiting list. The things that made life worth living.
Only it didn’t quite work out like that. Instead of setting the agenda, Rish! found himself on the defensive. Forced to answer accusations that he was to blame for cutting the school buildings fund as chancellor. So here was his chance to show some leadership. To show he was ready to acknowledge his own and previous Tory governments’ failings and tell us what he was going to do about them. Or maybe not. What we got was Rish! on autopilot defence mode. Quick to shift the blame on to anyone but him. Just a jumble of nonsense. His own artificial stupidity. RishGPT. Schools had never been anything to do with him, even though he had signed off the schools budget. And he had committed to rebuilding as many as 50 schools a year. Er … precisely. The Department for Education had estimated that at least 300 schools needed rebuilding each year. And maybe the department had capacity to do 200. But Sunak, in his brilliance, had given enough money for 50. “It’s not true that I didn’t care,” wittered RishGPT. He had cared. Just not very much. If there was a victim in this, it was Sunak himself. Surely the country could see he was desperately unlucky that the schools had started falling down on his watch. Why couldn’t they have held together till after the next election, when Labour could carry the can? All those questions from Labour over the last few years about unsafe buildings? He had never seen them. It was all the fault of his ministers. In whom he had complete trust. Trust that he would land them in it and they wouldn’t moan. It wasn’t fair that the boy prince had been landed with such a talent vacuum in the cabinet. Oh, and by the way, there were more than 1,000 schools that could fall down at a moment’s notice. But nothing to worry about. Look on the bright side. Around 95% of schools would still be standing by Christmas. People should stop talking Britain down. In the meantime, Gillian Keegan was fighting a rearguard action herself. The education secretary is an unusual sort. A minister with no radar for danger. Her default position is overconfidence. Do nothing and let things sort themselves out. Hakuna matata. When news came in that A-level results were worse this year, her message to students had been to chill. It was no big deal. She couldn’t really work out why so many pupils had worked so hard in the first place, as in 10 years’ time no one would care. University was just a debt mountain. People would have been far better off doing nothing. Careers were so overrated. Not exactly an endorsement of the education system. Keegan felt much the same way about school buildings. You could have too much of the nanny state. Not that it was her department’s responsibility to make sure the buildings were safe anyway. That was down to someone else. She wasn’t sure who. Probably the local authorities whose powers her government had stripped away. So what if a few buildings fell? People were far too attached to their children. Modern wokery and all that. “Buildings can collapse for many reasons,” she said. Like earthquakes. These things happened all the time. So there was no point in trying to repair crumbling concrete. Taking a leaf out of the RishGPT playbook, Keegan was taking no responsibility for anything in a broadcast interview. Rather than apologise to parents and children for badly mismanaging the return to school and decades of underfunding, Keegan went on the offensive. “Everyone else has sat on their arse,” she moaned. The government’s very own Nicola Murray from The Thick of It. And how come no one had praised her “for doing a fucking good job”? Er, possibly because she hadn’t been doing one. And possibly because no one had asked her to become education secretary. But since she was there, they would rather she got on with the job. Not act as if she was doing everyone a favour. A sense of entitlement is the lifeblood of this government. Keegan looked as though she couldn’t wait for hospitals to start falling down and take the heat off her. For her Commons statement late in the day, Keegan had been given a bit of coaching. Dial down your own brilliance. Look as though you might be a little bit sorry. “Nothing is more important than children’s safety,” she said. Failing to explain why the government had let the buildings fall to bits. But she wanted to say how grateful she was to all those she had imagined were sitting on their arses. And hey, there was an upside. The UK would soon know more about Raac in schools than anyone else. A big win. None of this impressed the shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, who shredded Keegan’s excuses. The short- and long-term negligence. Years of doing nothing when the department knew the buildings were past their sell-by date. Talk your way out of that one. Keegan couldn’t. She already felt she had done far too much for everyone. Give, give, give. The Tory backbenchers were by and large supportive, if not enthusiastic. Preferring not to have a fight in public. Vicky Ford felt MPs shouldn’t frighten children by telling them they could get hurt if the roof fell in. We should all just pretend it was a cartoon. Mark Francois was the only one spoiling for a fight. What the minister had said didn’t square with what he had been told. Keegan ignored him. It was all she could do. Raac and ruin. Depraved New World by John Crace (Guardian Faber, £16.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.