Keir Starmer take note – calling on the government to do what it already intends to do is poor opposition

Labour should be using valuable parliamentary time to make constructive suggestions, writes John Rentoul

Keir Starmer needs a better strategy for pressing the government (PA)

It is one thing to work out what the government is likely to do and to demand that they do it – Keir Starmer is good at that, although it has its dangers. It is quite another thing to take what the government has already said it will do and to demand that it do it – that just looks silly. 

Yet it is what Starmer and Kate Green, the shadow education secretary, did today, demanding that Gavin Williamson come to the House of Commons “to guarantee that schools and colleges will be first to reopen when lockdown eases.” As Boris Johnson and Williamson have both said as much, this makes it look as if the opposition either hasn’t been paying attention or is playing games with an important issue. 

Nor can Williamson be blamed for sending his deputy, Nick Gibb, the schools minister, to answer the (non-)question. Green complained that “he has failed to give parents, students and staff the credible plan they deserve”, on the grounds that no one knows whether schools will be reopening before Easter. This is a strange sort of opposition, demanding a level of certainty of the government, about an unpredictable epidemic, that no one realistically expects. 

It is true that the government looked bad when most English primary schools opened for one day at the beginning of January only to close again, and yet that happened because Johnson and Williamson agreed with Labour that it was so important that children should stay at school if at all possible. 

On that occasion, Starmer was rather slow in working out what the government was about to do, and only managed to switch from calling for schools to be kept open to calling for them to be closed a few hours before Johnson announced that they would indeed be shut. 

All the same, Williamson accepted that it hadn’t been ideal to give schools a few hours’ notice, and this time he has promised to try to give them two weeks’ notice of reopening. That, essentially, is the “plan”: that schools and college closures should be the first restrictions to be eased and that the government will try to give two weeks’ notice if it can. Green tried to pad out her two minutes at the despatch box by asking other questions about the order in which schools, colleges and universities would be reopened, although I don’t know that anyone disagrees that primary schools and exam years should come first. 

It would have been better if, instead of calling on the government to do what it already intends to do, Labour had used valuable parliamentary time to make some constructive suggestions. Jane Merrick made some sensible suggestions this morning on how primary-school-aged children could take part in activities and sport outdoors, which is relatively safe (if cold). Perhaps she should be shadow education secretary. 

Instead, the actual shadow education secretary has spent her time asking the government questions she knows the answers to and demanding the resignation of the secretary of state. This may be another example of the opposition working out what the prime minister is likely to do and calling for it first, although its immediate effect is to ensure that Williamson is kept in post. 

I understand that Williamson is unpopular, especially with teachers (most education secretaries are), and that Green and Starmer may think they are ingratiating themselves with a significant electoral constituency. But the convention is that opposition parties don’t call for resignations, for good reasons: in persuading floating voters, “show don’t tell” is a good dictum. All an effective opposition has to do is to expose Williamson’s flaws and to allow his unpopularity to work itself out. 

Instead, Starmer is preventing Nick Gibb, who would make an excellent education secretary, from taking over, and reinforcing his own reputation as Captain Hindsight.