Cameron on Education

The Times announces that Call Me Dave Cameron has decided to announce education policies for his party. Actually, no, scratch that, he has decided to pontificate and procrastinate to avoid having to announce any policies on education. Nothing revelatory in that I know, but let’s take a look at what Cameron says. Because it neatly sums up the fundamental problem I have with him.

Cameron has attacked parents who don’t look after their children. He says:

“If a child is eating too much, it’s the duty of a parent to stop it happening. Allowing harmful behaviour as the price of a quiet life is grossly selfish and irresponsible. Being a good parent isn’t just a gift to your child but to the whole of society.”

Semantically, I would argue that being a good parent is a duty rather than a gift, but I pretty much agree with with what Cameron says. And with this:

“Communities have an important role in bringing up children. Collective disapproval is a powerful tool in regulating behaviour and establishing social norms. If children are misbehaving, we should say something.”

Sure, communities are important. I would say that I would not be willing to chastise a misbehaving child for fear of violent retribution from the kid or from the parent, but I do believe the community, along with the parents and the education system, have a role to play. I can even support this statement conditionally:

“The great challenge for the 1970s and 1980s was economic revival. The great challenge in this decade and the next is social revival.”

I think the Iraq War, social inclusion and the EU will also be great challenges moving forward, but I agree that social revival is something that should be addressed and has utterly failed to be addressed by Nu Labour.

But where Cameron completely fails is to suggest exactly how we are going to bring about social revival, about how we are going to improve parenting and how we are going to involve communities in ensuring the better upbringing of children. What are the policies going to be, Dave? How are you going to bring about the change? Because this is all so much making the right noises to avoid making the right policies.

This latest pronouncement simply shows that all of his critics are right about Cameron – he is all spin and no substance. Because he was not announcing policy, but rather a childhood inquiry – in other words, an inquiry that may come up with some policies. Possibly. At some point in the future. It is just not good enough for any party leader, let alone the leader of the Conservative Party, to have no policies. The fact that Blair has been doing it for over a decade does not matter. It is just not good enough - and the state of Britiain today proves that.

And I don’t think this sort of thing will help Cameron at all in the future. Because if I was in the Labour party HQ right now, I would spinning to the press that Cameron – the Tory toff leader – has just discovered, from his ivory tower upbringing and sainted life to date, that there is a problem with parts of our society. But because he has no real understanding of the problems because he has only just discover them, he cannot do anything other than talk about them rather than offer any sort of solution whatsoever.