Teather's Spin

I see that Sarah Teather is trying to spin that Building Schools for the Future was not a real programme. That takes some chutzpah. Even now that she and her party have handed the axe to Michael Gove, hundreds of schools are being built under the programme because the government cannot cancel the contracts without being sued by the private sector. Brent Council officers had already started preliminary work on how the rebuilds would take place. Indeed Brent Council has a specific section in its Children & Families Department called "Building Schools for the Future". This was set up under the previous Lib Dem / Tory controlled Council to implement the programme. What would have been the point of doing that if the Liberal Democrats expected the whole thing to be axed?

Even Nick Clegg, in his infamous "savage cuts" interview for the Guardian, promised to protect infrastructure, and there are few bits of infrastruture more important education.

The reality is that the Liberal Democrats have jumped into bed with a Tory party that still has an ideological committment to shrinking the state, as indeed do some of the Liberal Democrats themselves. Building Schools for the Future is being sacrificed to pay for the Tory "free schools" policy that Sarah Teather criticised before the election. Now, for the sake of occupying office, she and her party colleagues are implementing brutal and counterproductive Tory policies.