I enjoyed reading Hannah Barnes’s interview with Katharine Birbalsingh (The NS Interview, 14 February). Birbalsingh is undoubtedly an effective leader, a skilled orator and a relentless advocate for her vision. But let’s not pretend she is the sole proprietor of academic excellence in England, nor that her penchant for pugilism is the only way to secure high standards.
Birbalsingh is both a populist and a maverick, capable of starting a fight in an empty room and then claiming victory. Her interventions are often designed less to illuminate complex issues and more to provoke another ideological skirmish. The current furore over the Schools Bill is no exception.
England has no shortage of successful schools that achieve exceptional outcomes without resorting to polemic or rigid doctrine. Leadership should be about inspiration, not confrontation. Schools should prepare children for the world, not just examinations. And debate should be more than a theatrical clash of egos. England’s schools deserve better than this manufactured culture war.
Mike Ion, former Department for Education adviser and education director of a large multi-academy trust
Hard Labour
Andrew Marr is doubtless right in implying that Labour’s supporters in the Red Wall tend to favour socially conservative policies (Cover Story, 14 February). However, the government is soon going to have a dilemma in fiscal policy: a choice between increasing taxes on the more affluent and implementing cuts to already depleted public services. I suggest that if they choose the latter they will have missed the unprecedented opportunity presented by the emergence of split forces on the right, and alienate those who voted for them in their traditional heartlands and elsewhere. A return to some form of austerity would surely result in a one-term administration.
Paul Scripps, Baldock, Hertfordshire
While I can comprehend Andrew Marr’s argument about Labour experiencing a political “Reformation” due to the twin pressures of the rise of Reform and the election of Trump, I fail to understand why Labour should want to move rightwards at this time. There are two parties competing for the populist-leaning, right-wing voters. Surely now is the time to assert Labour’s social-democratic roots with progressive policies that differentiate it from some of the worst these populists have to offer.
Phil Lee, Elslack, North Yorkshire
Andrew Marr’s column sent shivers down my spine. He is correct that the majority of supporters will not be holding their collective noses and letting the government go its own, self-defeating way. Labour is far better than this – or at least should be. The latest cold and callous move is that refugees who come to this country by “irregular” means but have been accepted and given sanctuary will never be granted British citizenship, even if they have built good lives here. This is outrageous and totally against Labour’s ethos. I should imagine many backbenchers will be up in arms about this calculating and indeed craven measure.
Judith A Daniels, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
Kind of Blue
Sadly the “Battle for Labour’s Soul” (Inside Westminster, 14 February) seems already to have been won by those forces taking a very hard line on race, immigration and asylum as the path to electoral success and the defeat of a resurgent Reform. This is becoming increasingly repugnant, with the cheap video-stunt removal of failed asylum seekers, the stripping of citizenship rights for people arriving by small boats, and with Starmer saying there are too many immigrants. Labour should be treating asylum seekers facing persecution with humanity, not dehumanising them, and promoting more safe and legal routes. It should talk about the benefits of immigration to the NHS, social care, the economy, universities, culture and society. Our responsibility is not just the Blue Labour mantra to “listen to people’s concerns” but to provide sustained and principled leadership that articulates an alternative narrative on immigration. This lurch to the right only serves to legitimise the racist rhetoric of Reform and the Conservatives. As the march of the far right in Europe is showing, why vote for the copy if you can have the real thing ?
Gideon Ben-Tovim, University of Liverpool
Maurice Glasman describes approximately 50 million people not residing in the south-east of England as living in “faraway towns” – says it all about the political, economic and social centralisation of this country.
Moira Sykes, Manchester
Leader of the unfree world
Donald Trump and JD Vance’s bullying behaviour globally illuminates the true meaning of “the Maga-sphere” (Media Notebook, Alison Phillips, 14 February). “Make America Great Again” can only refer back to the time when the US was the world’s premier bully. It backed right-wing dictators from Pinochet in Chile to Mengistu in Ethiopia, and from Marcos in the Philippines to Suharto in Indonesia, and supported military governments in South Vietnam, Pakistan, Guatemala and El Salvador. It aided the killers of Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, and imposed an unelected president on Guatemala. Nobody should depict him as “good ol’ uncle Trump” when evil is abroad.
David Murray, Wallington, Surrey
Discipline and flourish?
Hannah Barnes’s interview with the head teacher of Michaela Community School, Katharine Birbalsingh (The NS Interview, 14 February), though interesting, made me see the need to view schools through a different lens. There’s more to education than grades and Ofsted reports. We’re going through an epidemic of child and adolescent mental illness and criminality. Many children refuse to go to school. That can’t all be down to smartphones and lockdowns. The school environment is crucial to a child’s mental health, so how does Michaela perform on that metric? Barnes, like others who have visited Michaela, describes its students as “confident”. Though regimented and micro-managed, they express gratitude for their school. I wonder what the school is like when there are no visitors, and how alumni adapt to life beyond it?
Vera Lustig, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey
It is worrying that Hannah Barnes premises her article about Katharine Birbalsingh by elevating her to the position of spokesperson for all academy schools. A survey carried about by the Edurio polling platform on behalf of Schools Week showed 60 per cent of academy leaders said the bill will have no impact on their schools. As a teacher of 40 years who has worked for a multi-academy trust, it also concerns me that there is no mention of staff contributions, conditions or issues around workload and welfare. It is also revealing that the only mention of staff in the article is to laud the fact that Birbalsingh is able to employ unqualified staff. This not something to celebrate.
Simon Attridge, Saddleworth, Greater Manchester
It is true that “Birbalsingh’s regimented approach at Michaela Community School has achieved some of top Progress 8 scores in England”, but so have similar schools in similar areas without that very high degree of regimentation – and without her megaphone self-promotion.
Professor Colin Richards, former H M Inspector of Schools, Spark Bridge, Cumbria
Et tu, Potus?
Tom Holland’s piece on Suetonius (The Critics, 14 February) put me in mind of Suetonius’s comment in his life of Julius Caesar: “His baldness was a disfigurement which his enemies harped upon, much to his exasperation; but he used to comb the thin strands of hair forward from his poll.” Now who does that remind us of?
J Graeme Roberts, Aberdeen
The AI-nxious generation
Pippa Bailey eases the anxiety about AI (Deleted Scenes, 14 February). It cannot replicate individuality or life experience, and “reproducing” her with trite generalisations and clichés is a monstrously outrageous defamation!
Mike Bor, London W2
Remember trouble
Even with a philosophy degree, I am having difficulty understanding how Judith Butler (The NS Q&A, 14 February) can state that “there are memories that are apparently lost to me”. These are presumably memories that are at the same time not memories. Puzzling.
Dr Geoffrey Harper, Hereford
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[See also: The threat of peace]
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This article appears in the 19 Feb 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Europe Alone