The Horsell's Mouth Politics, pedantry and personal interests

Ed Balls - a rare point

Ed Balls, the man who takes the ‘Ed’ out of ‘education’, has ever-so-accidentally let skip that he wants to slice £2bn from the education budget on the grounds that our national debt will reach a staggering £1.1tn by 2011.

Well, £2bn isn’t a great deal in the grand scheme of things but every penny helps. Why, though, has he chosen to be so very public about these cuts, which he maintains will be achieved by relatively painless “natural wastage”? Because by 2011, when the next spending review in 2010 will take effect, Balls and his chums will all be on the opposition front benches – but the treasury figures will have been predicated with a £2bn reduction in education spending for George Osborne to worry about.

So George Osborne’s first review will have education cuts built in and he will have to decide whether to keep them in and risk a high-profile run-in with the NUT, those cheeky Lib Dems and even the bare-facedly shameless PLP - or whether to put that money back in for the sake of some great PR and wield the axe elsewhere.

It’s one of many, many ticking packages that the Labour front bench is busy constructing for an incoming Conservative government. As if ruining the country wasn’t bad enough, Labour also believes it’s a good idea to sabotage the tools of the next government who have to sort out their sorry legacy.

The only hope that this country has of being able to contribute something worthwhile to the world and hold its place on the top table of nations rests with the quality of education we give people, young and old alike. There may be cuts to be made in our education system – I don’t know, I’m not an insider – but getting rid of teachers appears to me to be a “must try harder” idea.

We need more teachers – we need better teachers – but we also need an education system with different types of education to provide interest for different types of people – scientific, artistic, business-minded, academic, practical, creative and everything in between. For that, we need more money, not less. I would rather see money diverted from income-based benefits into both child and adult education to take people out of state-sponsored poverty and into self-driven opportunity.

No doubt Ed Balls’s response to my view would be “so what?”. Labour just doesn’t see education in the same way. I believe Tony Blair did – but he was never supported by his party in his aim to make education the enabling, enlightening, enriching and enduring aspect of our lives that it should be. 

DC and his front bench have largely had the benefit of great education and they should be able to appreciate the difference it can make. Let’s hope so – this is one area of Conservative policy I’m looking forward to seeing in the manifesto. But first they have to dodge the Balls.