Boris Johnson has been too slow on everything – including getting children back to school. And Labour knows it

With a new shadow education secretary, Keir Starmer can take full advantage of the government’s hesitancy, writes John Rentoul

Boris Johnson’s government has been slow to react to a number of issues around coronavirus (EPA)

There was a fashion in the school playground about 20 years ago for high-fiving someone, saying “Up high”, then “down low” for a low-five, if that is what it is called, but pulling away your hand before the victim could touch it and saying, “You’re too slow.”

It was silly and potentially cruel, and it is precisely the trick that Keir Starmer is playing, repeatedly, on Boris Johnson. “Up high,” Starmer supports the prime minister, even if he doesn’t actually congratulate him on his handling of the coronavirus crisis; but he offers to cooperate with the government, and then, “down low”, he replaces that support with criticism, saying again and again, “You’re too slow.”

The government has been too slow on testing, too slow on protective equipment, too slow to lock down, alleges Starmer. Whatever the government has done, it has done it too slowly. It is brilliant politics, because most people think, in hindsight, that the government’s reaction was too slow, even if Johnson followed the advice of the scientific committee at all times. It is always possible, if you cannot criticise an action, to say that it should have happened more quickly.

Except on getting children back to school, where public opinion has been fearful and uncertain; the biggest teaching union, the NEU, has been cautious about protecting its members’ health; and the Labour Party has tried to face both ways.

Quite by chance, Rebecca Long-Bailey forced Starmer to sack her on an unrelated matter last week, and she was replaced as shadow education secretary by Kate Green, who on the day of her appointment said: “I look forward to working with teachers, unions, parents and councils to help ensure we get our children back in school as soon as possible.”

She then drove the message home with her first words from the despatch box on Thursday: “All children must be safely back in school by September.” Just in case there was any doubt about Labour’s position, she added later: “I support the secretary of state in reintroducing compulsory attendance at schools.”

So now Starmer has the full set. The government has been too slow on everything, including getting children back to school.

Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, looked as woebegone as ever as he announced reams of detailed guidance for schools – he was proud of the quantity and even boasted that “we have taken a lot of time to study how other countries deal with this problem”.

But that is the problem. He has taken too much time. As Green pointed out, children will have been out of school for six months by September. Williamson’s attempt to persuade schools to reopen even briefly before the summer holiday was abandoned with a shrug, as he tried to blame Labour and the unions for his own feebleness. Even now there is so much more that could be done to get makeshift classes for the pupils who need them most up and running over the summer.

At least there is no doubt that the Labour leadership is now putting pressure on Williamson to do the right thing. He tried to deflect that pressure with some rather pointed exchanges with Labour MPs who were less aligned with the “back to school” message from the new shadow education secretary.

I am afraid I am childish enough to have enjoyed Williamson’s response to Richard Burgon, the third-placed candidate for Labour’s deputy leadership, who said, via video, that he wanted children back at school and then set out a long list of reasons why they should not be: “Sadly the honourable gentleman wasn’t on mute.” And Williamson came close to being animated when Emma Lewell-Buck, Labour, suggested it still wasn’t safe for children to go back: “I am not sure what she is suggesting: that until there is a vaccine children will just not go back to school?”

In my view, we have long passed the point at which more damage is being done by keeping children out of school than by the low risk of spreading the virus at school. I am not in favour of forcing parents to send their children to school, or of requiring teachers to go to work if they don’t think it is safe, but the education emergency is more serious than the health problem. Public opinion seems to be coming round to this view: Ipsos Mori found an 11-point rise last week to 49 per cent in the proportion of parents who say they feel “comfortable” sending their children to school (as against 42 per cent who said “not comfortable”).

The government has been too slow to respond, and I was astonished when Boris Johnson confessed in his speech in Dudley on Tuesday that “parts of government” had “seemed to respond so sluggishly” to the coronavirus crisis.

Now Keir Starmer has a shadow education secretary to help make that case and to keep up the pressure on Williamson to catch up as urgently as he can.