School’s out

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Edward Colston fell last weekend in Bristol. Robert Milligan in Canary Wharf was the next statue to be removed. It had actually been held in storage until 1997, before being re-erected that year in the drive to regenerate the Docklands area of east London. Milligan was a prominent slave owner, and as Sadiq Khan put it: “It’s a sad truth that much of our wealth was derived from the slave trade – but this does not have to be celebrated in our public spaces.” The mayor has established a commission to review statues and landmarks with the aim of improving diversity, while Labour councils across England and Wales have promised to undertake their own reviews.

Many Tories are intensely annoyed about these activities as they claim that history is being erased. I can’t remember a time when there was so much discussion of these historical figures, though, which would suggest that the removals are more educational than the continued commemoration of men who traded in humans – as well as being historical moments in themselves. Conservative commentators cannot resist describing it all as ‘virtue signalling’ and they are desperate to return to discussions of ‘moral relativism’. But as David Olusoga wrote, this is “one of those rare historic moments whose arrival means things can never go back to how they were”.

There is also much frustration in the Conservative Party over the government’s handling of schools reopening in England. We have witnessed a predictable U-turn: the aim to get all primary school children back in class a month before the summer holidays has been dropped, as it turns out trade unions were right to describe the current plans as unworkable. The Times has attributed this shambles to a lack of “determined and imaginative leadership” and called on the Prime Minister to “take personal charge”.

Perhaps most important is a recognition that only 25% of those children eligible to return to school did so last week. This is a broader issue of public confidence in the government, which is falling at a time of crisis. The top scientific advisers have disappeared from the press conferences. Ministers keep making policy on the hoof, and they are unable to answer the simplest of questions in media appearances. The Tories are so eager to ‘return to normal’ that they dismissed the idea of improving life under lockdown, instead choosing to rush through measures that unsurprisingly go wrong and end up lengthening the whole process of easing restrictions. The damage will be felt for many years to come.

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