Janet responds and so do I

Janet Daley returns to grammar schools with this remark:

Team Cameron, meanwhile, sinks deeper into utter confusion and incoherence. On the one hand, it insists that the past week's political nightmare (including the chorus of attacks from critics like me) has been just what it wanted; on the other, it bursts into floods of tears and accuses me of being nasty and unhelpful for pointing out the potholes in its own road to the future. Conservative spokesmen are apparently allowed to say vindictive and merciless things about the way middle-class parents raise their children, but those who take the assault personally must remain constructive and helpful in their response. OK, this is me being helpful.

I think she means me, ladies and gentleman.

I realise, with a bit of a sigh (I often find myself moved by oped columns, naturally, but rarely to floods of tears, I must confess), that I am wasting my time here, but I should point out that her suggestion that Conservative spokesman said "vindictive and merciless things about the way middle-class parents raise their children" is twaddle. The merciless things Janet objected to she first span up before objecting to them.

And I didn't say that arguing against Conservative grammar schools is nasty and unhelpful. I said that calling David Cameron's advisers "juvenile idiots" was nasty and uncalled for. Which it was.

Janet Daley is able to make intelligent and worthwhile arguments without resorting to such nonsense. I don't like tangling with her particularly, since I like her. But I felt her invective was such that it would be cowardly not to respond.

I've read many, many excellent columns by Janet. The original grammar schools piece wasn't one of them. I didn't think that printing the same points again improved it.

Comments

[Graeme Archer]

You just soar higher and yet higher in my estimation Mr F. It must take some form of guts to take on, publicly, a fellow-member (at other times!) of the vast right-wing conspiracy (if only) among journalists. But Daley's increasingly shrill and value-free paragraphs in the (sadly declining rapidly) Telegraph deserved to be answered by someone of stature.

Sadly (see Conservative Home for details) I think this 'issue' (i.e. David Cameron's refusal to propose a return to the 11-plus as his key/only education policy) has been the emblem which the diehards in the party - those who would rather lose in perpetuity, blaming the public rather than themselves - have chosen to fight under. What I find quite interesting is that whatever post hoc reasoning attempted by the likes of Daley, it seems clear (from the words with which they decorate their columns -- see also Simon Heffer, Ingham etc), at root, they just can't stomach David Cameron's ease with society (their response to him is almost purely aesthetic -- witness Daley's choice of words, see Cons. Home again -- and not intellectual, by the way, since it is impossible to listen to David Cameron discuss issues like social responsibility without concluding that he's a 100% Tory of quite an old-fashioned hue).

Nearly all the 'amateur' anti-Cameron froth-ites end their posts to Conservative Home with words like 'that's it, I'm off to UKIP'. I wish they'd take Daley & Heffer with them. What fun they could have together, dreaming of the 1950s that never were.

[Ralph Lucas]

I suspect she's only doing what her bosses have asked her to do, to add weight to their own political views.

When yours asks the same of his columnists on the Times, do they resist? Always?

[Matt Hancock]

I completely agree with Graeme Archer.

The Telegraph is becoming increasingly unreadable and conservativehome is full of those who'd rather the party infight and eat their own young.

'Grammargate' is such a non-issue (for the wider electorate, if not the salivating right). Who seriously believed that any Prime Minister - of any party - would build any more grammar schools anyway??

Many elements of the Tory party need to grow up.

[David Sergeant]

I have always admired Daley (never Heffer!) but her last two articles are utterly confused and incoherent. It would appear that someone has decided that there must be a last ditch stand to mess up the Tory party and Cameron before things get too successful. Given her vindictive comments that bear no relation to what she claimed to be refering to I suspect Daley doesn't believe herself and is acting to orders.

[Cary]

So DF objects to JD's views on grammar schools by.... making a personal attack on her! Rather proves her point.

Anyone fancy playing the ball rather than the man (or woman)?

[Stuart]

Mr Finkelstein you are absolutely right on this one and Daley still doesn't get the point. The point is that a return to Grammar schools inevitably means a return to secondary moderns. You have to educate the less able kids somewhere, not all schools can be shining beacons of academe as these fanciful folk seem to believe.

Also, her unhelpful attitude in blaming the teaching profession for all the ills of the education system is not going to aid a future Tory education minister implement a new policy. They may be skeptical, to the point of hostility, but the challenge is to win them round, not accuse them of being the problem. Ultimately they will be the ones that implement any policy.

Personally I have little time for either Daley or Heffer. They both seem to have descended into pointless why-oh-why merchants contributing very little of value to the national debate.

[jimmy]

Changing tack a bit, today's Telegraph leader helpfully opines that this is becoming the Conservatives' Clause Four moment.

Leave aside that some consider Labour's Clause Four moment to be more spin than reality.

In the case at hand, this is most definitely spin more than reality. The Conservative party had (so far as I could tell) no official policy to repudiate, unlike Labour in the early 90s. There will be no watershed moment made tangible by a party vote.

Mr Willetts could have made the substantive points of his speech without deprecating Grammar schools, or even mentioning them at all.

It just seems to me that they wanted some nice mood music playing in the left-leaning media.

Maybe we should accept the assertions in the Spectator and the Telegraph (without convincing proof of course) that they didn't quite calculate the volume of discordant mood music that would be emitted from the right-leaning media and its own Front Bench.

More importantly, the Telegraph leader says that Cameron must win this argument, for the sake of his reputation. I think his reputation would be more enhanced if he 'fessed up to a total miscalculation of the political fallout of what was, if I am right, intended mainly as a bit of fluff to attract some attention in the BBC.