Elaborate grooming is seldom a good sign. James Bond villains are cruel dandies, double-cuffed with Cuban heels.
Each miraculous strand of Donald Trump‘s hair is candy-flossed into place. My first pensions adviser used Cossack hairspray and an Italian aftershave that could have killed bluebottles. He cost me a fortune.
Bridget Phillipson, Education Secretary, had her first session of Commons education questions yesterday.
Ms Phillipson is the one waging class-war on private schools.
Her 20 per cent tax raid is unlikely to dent Eton and Harrow much but it will skittle smaller independent schools, causing misery for staff, parents and pupils.
Bridget Phillipson, Education Secretary, had her first session of Commons education questions yesterday
Her 20 per cent tax raid is unlikely to dent Eton and Harrow much but it will skittle smaller independent schools, causing misery for staff, parents and pupils (stock image)
It’s going to cost the Treasury a fortune to educate thousands of displaced children. Billions from overseas pupils may be lost. Learning will plummet. Is Ms Phillipson bovvered? Nah.
From under her fastidiously coiffed barnet came a cold-eyed shrug. She’s all Silvikrin sleekness, this one. An inky black bob is parted so neatly, you can see the skin of her scalp.
It must take ages every morning to make that parting so precise. Her hair’s beveled sides, tips as sharp as Stanley knives, swing round her jaw like the curtains in a clap clinic.
They must wreck her lateral vision but politically that suits the woman. She’s not one for looking to the sides. Just stares straight ahead down the tunnel of lovelessness.
Mirthless, unyielding, she’s as acidic a martinet as you’ll find in this new Government.
Everything that was wrong with British education was the Conservatives fault, Phillipson argued (file image)
Bridget Phillipson speaks to pupils during a visit to Loreto Sixth Form College in Manchester as students receive their A-level results on August 15
But nervous, oddly. She was gulpy at the start of the hour-long session and struggled to control her breathing.
Her nerves were a puzzle for two reasons: first, the Government has such an enormous majority, no minister need feel short of allies in this Commons; second, she read practically every word from her civil service briefing notes, so there was no risk of an extempore slip.
‘Qualifications must deliver on our missions,’ she intoned in a tight, atonal voice, ’embracing and spreading opportunity and growing our economy.’
The nose barely lifted from her file but when she did look up, she did a lot of blinking. Her lips curled, either with stage fright or revulsion at the pitiful number of Conservatives who were sitting opposite her.
Everything that was wrong with British education was their fault, she kept arguing.
Time and again, Phillipson stated that she would ‘drive high and rising standards’ in schools (stock image)
The official-speak continued to leak out of her. ‘Support skills growth and bring certainty where there has been chaos… improve skills training… widen opportunity and harness talent.’
There are ways of reading your ministerial brief. You can do so briskly, imparting an air of efficiency.
You can do so with a camp, ironic flourish, as Michael Gove used to, showing the House that you know this Whitehall waffle is merely part of the parliamentary pavane.
Or you can do a Phillipson, which is to regurgitate it with robotic bluntness, wielding the cliches like a mole-killer’s spade. Even in repose she looked tremendously cheesed-off.
Anything done by the Conservative government was dreadful, apparently. Everything was now going to be ‘driven forward’.
Time and again, she stated that she would ‘drive high and rising standards’.
Not all Labour MPs were thrilled about the tax raid on private schools. Gareth Snell (Stoke Central, pictured) said a prep school in his constituency was closing
Given that she is going to destroy the sector that achieves the best exam results, this was at best open to doubt.
‘We are determined to drive forward and make Britain a clean-energy superpower,’ she intoned disgustedly. ‘Skills England are going to allow us to identify the skills gaps in every corner of our country and make sure we drive forward on that mission.’
For comic contrast we had one of her under-ministers, Janet Daby (Lewisham East), who sounded so spaced out, you wonder if someone slipped a marijuana brownie into her lunchbox.
Not all Labour MPs were thrilled about the tax raid on private schools. Gareth Snell (Stoke Central) said a prep school in his constituency was closing. Rachael Maskell (York Central) feared Steiner schools were doomed.
Ms Phillipson got another of her underlings to deal with these complaints. She just sat there under her Sunderland bob – Anna Wintour minus the sunshine.
