Newsletter #3: Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson — a Cabinet weak link?

PLUS: Woke Sir Keir’s Portrait Scandal, The Spectator, and 'Operation Jess' (top secret)

Good morning.

It’s been a bit quiet since the final two in the Tory leadership contest went out to the members. There have a been a few updates on this front, as both candidates attempt to gather endorsements that they feel will persuade the Conservative electorate. ‘Kemi’ has gifted us some totally inane, policy- and strategy-free campaign videos. Jenrick, aside from getting the backing of Jacob Rees-Mogg (popular with members), while still mostly good — and certainly far better than ‘Kemi’ — has made a few missteps in an attempt to appear more a ‘unifier’ than a ‘divider’ of the Tory Party.

We’ll return to the Tory leadership election soon enough. Today, however, we will mostly be focusing on Labour, not the Tories: on two clear weak links in the Party, and how they can be exploited; and on how Keir Starmer has finally proven beyond any doubt that he is completely and totally Woke.

This newsletter’s agenda: Bridget Phillipson — a Cabinet weak link? (free); Woke Sir Keir’s Portrait Scandal (free); The Spectator’s Scottish cabal rolls on (paid); ‘Operation Jess’: a top-secret proposal (paid).

The first and second sections are free. Upgrade to a paid subscription — normally £8/month (or £80/year), but ten percent off for one year until the end of October, click here! — to read the third and fourth sections of this newsletter.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson — a Cabinet weak link?

Looking at Starmer’s Cabinet, it is striking how little depth it has. Almost none of his ministers have much name recognition. Starmer’s destruction of all his opponents within the Labour Party may, in hindsight, have been a little too complete. It now risks backfiring.

Some of those in his Cabinet — such as Pat McFadden, Shabana Mahmood, Jonathan Reynolds, John Healey, Louise Haigh, and Peter Kyle — are people who simply do not exist to the great bulk of the British public, even if some (e.g., McFadden) are prominent within the Labour Party. Even political obsessives haven’t heard of most of them (especially the last four). Others, while likely having more name recognition, would probably be viewed (rightly or wrongly) as little more than Starmer ciphers, rather than movers and shakers in their own right: some examples include David Lammy, Yvette Cooper, Ed Miliband, Hilary Benn, and Lisa Nandy.

This is beneficial to the Right: as a result of this, Starmer himself will become a lightning-rod for criticism, where he himself is directly blamed for every single mishap, as most people cannot even name the person who would seem to be directly responsible, or think they’re a non-entity anyway. Contrast this with Cameron: Gove would be blamed for unpopular and/or controversial policies on education, Hunt on health, Grayling on justice, Iain Duncan Smith on benefits, and so on. Even Osborne, while not fully separable from Cameron himself, absorbed some of the anger at austerity more generally; something that, for whatever reason, seems to be less true of Rachel Reeves. Perhaps, as time goes on, these no-name Labour ministers might rise to greater prominence, but that is yet to be seen.

Partly because of this, for Starmer, a ‘reset’ through a few symbolic sackings or reshuffles of unpopular ministers — showing that you are responding to criticism from the public (or from your own party) — is much more difficult to pull off. There are only a few people in the Cabinet who would be appropriate to this task, Wes Streeting being the most obvious. Rachel Reeves, by contrast, is effectively unsackable, as she is too closely tied to the broader project. Whether this is also true of climate fanatic Ed Miliband, the most damaging member of Starmer’s Cabinet by far, is yet to be seen.

Let me suggest, then, a rather different candidate for an early sacking: Secretary of State for Education and Minister of State for Women and Equalities Bridget Phillipson. Almost no-one has ever heard of her, or at least they hadn’t until a few months ago — so who is she?

Phillipson is the MP for Sunderland and Houghton South, a fairly safe Labour seat that nonetheless had a very strong Reform showing at the last election (Reform’s candidate took nearly 30% of the vote). It is most well-known for always being one of the first seats to declare at every election. To my surprise, she has actually been an MP since 2010. Given this, her lack of name recognition is surprising, especially when she is a fairly young (now aged 40, meaning she was in her mid-twenties when she became an MP), well-educated (Oxford), and good-looking woman, with an appealing backstory. She is actually from Sunderland, rather than being parachuted in, and was raised by a single mother who set up a refuge for battered women. Rather than leaving Sunderland behind forever once she graduated, she went back to her hometown, working first in local government, and then with her mother. A typical, private-sector-free career path of a Labour politician, but at least one that seems basically worthy, and tied to the provinces rather than to London.

She is exactly the sort of person who you expect Labour would be keen to have expounding their policies in the media and to the general public. And yet, until very recently, she was almost invisible. Why?

Part of the reason is that there just aren’t that many prominent Labour MPs left, as most of those who were of any consequence under New Labour have now retired. Naturally, it is much harder to become prominent in Opposition than it is in Government. But, while difficult, it certainly isn’t impossible if you want it enough, and most MPs, if they are sensible, do want it — after all, it helps you either draw attention to your political ideas, get promoted, or both. In my view, the actual answer is that, despite her superficial appeal, she just isn’t very good. She may well have not appeared in the media much because — as we are now seeing — it obviously isn’t her strong suit.

What most sticks out is her almost unbelievable incompetence in how she dealt with complaints about her accepting free tickets to a Taylor Swift concert (why are all these people so obsessed with her?). While she was undeniably in a difficult position, in my view, she should have said is something like this: ‘There is zero evidence that I have ever been swayed in my decision-making by this gift: from my perspective, it seemed to be unproblematic. If I was worried about any conflicts of interest created by it, I certainly wouldn’t have accepted it. However, I understand that the public have concerns, so I definitely would not have accepted the tickets if I could make that choice again.’ (At least that’s what I would have gone with.) She instead said: ‘I’ll be honest — it was a hard one to turn down… One of my children was keen to go along. It’s hard to say no if you’re offered tickets in those circumstances.’ Oh dear. Not impressive at all.

On top of the Taylor Swift tickets, she also accepted £14,000 from Lord Alli for her fortieth birthday party — a staggering sum of money for a birthday party. As such, Phillipson has become one of the main faces of Labour sleaze — aside from Starmer himself — all the while engaging in flagrant ‘class war’ against the squeezed, over-taxed upper-middle classes.

Ineptitude when it comes to dealing with the media is one thing, but what about her actual policies? The problem is that it isn’t entirely clear what policies Labour even have for education. So far, we have only two. Firstly, putting VAT on private school fees, which is not really even ‘education policy’ per se — it’s more of a tax and spending policy, primarily (as we have noted) rooted in ‘class war’ concerns rather than in anything to do with education itself. And secondly, ending ‘single-word’ Ofsted grade judgements of schools — clearly done solely to appease teachers, who are terrified of Ofsted. Ofsted are obviously not perfect, but those on the Right should be able to see this for what it is.

Even if we dig into Labour’s Manifesto — which, we are told, must be extremely technocratic and professional, because of its sheer length — their ideas for more long-term policy are thin gruel indeed. The headline policy is ‘more teachers’, apparently funded by the VAT change. That’s fine, if rather uninspired, but beyond this, it seems to be little more than a pig’s breakfast of clichés (more mental health support in schools), irrelevancies (no more branded PE kit), and bungs for Labour-supporting interest groups (more money and less work for teachers). Say what you will about Michael Gove, but he did at least have a clear vision of what British education should look like, and policies to achieve this. There are many things I don’t like about this ‘neo-disciplinarian’ vision, but it was a vision nonetheless. Labour have been out of power for a generation, and what do they have? Nothing.

Phillipson, then, is stuck. She’s widely thought to be a corrupt figure. She doesn’t have a real policy angle to push, whether popular, or unpopular; her own, or Keir Starmer’s. Her policy angle is, essentially, little more than appeasing sectional interests (i.e., teachers, who veered dramatically to the Left when Gove was Education Secretary) at the expense of everyone else. Nor is she doing anything that couldn’t just be done by someone else who is just that little bit more popular and less gaffe-prone. She’s not prominent, or influential in the party, or closely tied to Starmer himself. She is, in one word, disposable. Starmer may also come to this same realisation, making her a likely casualty in any future ‘reset’.

Woke Sir Keir’s Portrait Scandal

Sir Keir Rodney Starmer KCB KC has not had a pleasant first hundred days in Government. The media have suddenly turned on him, and become relentlessly hostile (perhaps partly out of boredom). He’s been questioned on how many identical, blue, untailored Charles Tyrwhitt suits he bought with the £32,000 he got for clothing from Lord Alli. He’s been forced to sack his Chief of Staff after endless public infighting. Messaging on the economy has been a contradictory mess. He let out the prisoners, killed the pensioners, and then signed away British territory for no apparent reason. Even an appeal to ‘law and order’ during the riots fell flat. His personal approval ratings have dipped beneath those of Rishi Sunak: a collapse in popularity unprecedented in speed in British history. Yesterday, for the first time in nearly 1,000 days, a poll showed Labour to be level with, rather than ahead of, the Tories: perhaps a one-off, but an omen of more bad things to come.

And as chaos reigns all around him, as his supporters begin to panic that they might not be able to recover from their miserable start, what has Sir Keir been up to? The answer seems to be: ‘mostly rearranging the furniture in Number 10.’

It is somewhat amusing that Starmer has seemingly removed these portraits one at a time, rather than getting rid of them all at once after some kind of ‘review’ into what sort of portraits are ‘appropriate’ in a ‘Downing Street fit for Modern Britain’. No; for Sir Keir, as ever, it’s all just about his own personal whims. A Day in the Life of Sir Keir: wake up, read the news, sign a couple of documents sent over by Morgan (didn’t bother reading them), remove a portrait, rest.

Thus far, Starmer has removed portraits of Thatcher, Gladstone, Elizabeth I, and Sir Walter Raleigh from Downing Street. A portrait of Henry VIII appears to still be in place; for how long, I do not know. (Maybe he’ll also be removed soon for ‘anti-Catholicism’, or ‘sexism’, or something similar.) Aides have refused to explain why exactly Starmer has removed the portraits, but it is easy enough for us to guess: that the Henry VIII portrait remains in place strongly suggests that this was motivated by some bizarre political concerns, especially over supposed ‘links to slavery’ (which is what connects three of the four), rather than — as he claimed after the removal of Thatcher’s portrait — him merely not wanting to be stared at from the wall.

As such, though I’m sure this will be denied by Labour apparatchiks, it seems beyond dispute that the removal of these portraits happened because, in short, Keir Starmer is a petty, Woke, uncultured freak. It also raises questions as to Starmer’s involvement in giving Mauritius reparations in all but name after signing away the Chagos Islands — maybe it wasn’t just Lammy’s decision after all? The Mauritius Government was, after all, represented by Starmer’s close friend, Phillipe Sands KC.

Removing Elizabeth I’s portrait is just bizarre: who doesn’t like Elizabeth I? She is almost universally considered by historians to be one of England’s best monarchs. The truth is that Sir Keir, a man of moderate-to-high intelligence, but with zero intellectual interests (he has publicly stated that he has no favourite book or poem), probably knows almost nothing about her, except perhaps that she had red hair. He has, however, presumably once been told something about Elizabeth I’s connection to slavery. And that was that: she just had to go, no more discussion needed. Total Woke victory, and there wasn’t even a battle.

In short: Sir Keir may be old. He may be out-of-touch with ‘the youth’, who obviously don’t really like him at all. He may not even be that left-wing in practice, at least on the economy, if only because he is rather inept. But despite all this, Sir Keir is indisputably, indubitably, completely and totally Woke. He is a follower of trends, and not a real leader. Any criticism from the right people, and he will instantly fold. He is a coward. The British media must work harder to make this basic fact much more well-known to the British public.

The Spectator’s Scottish cabal rolls on

Have you ever asked yourself the important question: Why are there so many Scots in the British media? They are overrepresented wherever you look. This is especially true of the centre-right media, and especially especially true of The Spectator. At The Spectator alone, among recent or current senior staff, we have Andrew Neil, Fraser Nelson, and now Michael Gove. As for the writers, we have Stephen Daisley and Alex Massie (apparently, they hate each other). Kemi Badenoch is also a Speccie alumna (she was completely useless); presumably, she was primarily hired because of her Scottish husband. Inexplicably, none of these men seem to be Celtic or Rangers fans — a statistical improbability for this many Scotsmen.

The Spectator, while financially successful under Nelson (especially by the standards of print media), is not an interesting magazine at the moment. There are a few good writers there — some of whom are readers, you know who you are — but they are very much in the minority. As I am not a ‘young fogey’ homosexual who ‘likes the arts section’ (I have been reliably informed by such types that it is good), and nor am I over sixty, I do not subscribe to The Spectator, let alone have the print edition delivered to my house weekly. However, when visiting my grandfather a while back, I opened up his copy. Here’s what it looked like:

‘The Spectator isn’t very good, is it?’, I said. My grandfather agreed: ‘No, it isn’t.’

What do we have here? ‘Back Ukraine’, ‘Back Israel’, ‘Putin’s Plan’, ‘Putin’s Jail’, ‘What is Prince William thinking?’ (almost certainly: ‘nothing at all’), something about a synagogue being ‘under threat from developers’ (is this really worthy of inclusion in a national magazine?), and… ‘This Trans Business’. The article that was the most interesting to me in this issue was written by Kate Andrews. I cannot stand Kate Andrews: this should have been impossible.