Phoney outrage over cuts hides Tory truth, Leo McKinstry

Challenged by Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions this week over the concrete crisis in schools, Rishi Sunak was on surprisingly punchy form. Having pointed out that expenditure on the school estate last year was the highest for a decade, he also revealed that the previous Labour Government’s over-hyped building programme was poor value for money. His robustness is unlikely to make much difference. The narrative of decay and neglect caused by “Tory cuts” is now firmly entrenched in our political culture. Across the public realm, the concept of “crumbling schools” has quickly become a metaphor to describe the supposed impact of the ideological austerity. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister showed on Wednesday that the overfilled balloon of Left-wing propaganda can be punctured by an injection of the facts. There are three potent arguments that can be made by the Tories against the manipulative hysteria about “cuts”. Rishi Sunak the PMQs this week (Image: PA) First, the rhetoric about the scale of the fiscal squeeze over the last 13 years had been exaggerated. In truth, overall public spending is at an all time high, and so are the budgets for vital services such as the NHS and education. That is why the burden of taxation is at its highest level since the 1940s. Second, lavish expenditure does not necessarily mean high quality, since the public sector is so riddled with bureaucracy, waste, mismanagement and restrictive practices. Third, amid the wails about the austerity programme under David Cameron’s coalition government, it should be remembered our public finances were on the verge of meltdown in 2010. Urgent action was needed to restore credibility. The failure of the Tories on fiscal policy lies not in excess zeal but in a reluctance to defend their record. Due to its own timidity and divisions in recent years, the Government has not only allowed its opponents to set the agenda, but has subsidised campaigners to peddle the phoney message about “lack of resources”. Anti-Conservative groupthink now prevails throughout our uni- versities, the voluntary sector and public bodies. Only last week, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds – which received £10million from taxpayers in 2022 – denounced Ministers for “lies” over their environmental record. Condemnation of “Tory cuts” is the surest way to win a burst of applause on BBC Question Time, just as few news bulletins from the Corporation – which has a guaranteed licence fee income of £3.5billion – are complete without some sob stories about the need for more taxpayers’ cash. Huge amounts of legal aid are poured into firms that try to thwart crackdowns on immigration abuses. In the same vein, the Arts Council spent £920million last year, much of it on woke agitprop that seeks to discredit the Government. Typical is a subsidised magazine based in East London called Write On, aimed at aspiring authors, which received an Arts Council grant of £720,000. A recent edition ranted: “Arts funding has been stripped across the public sector? Funding cuts have been made to arts subjects at universities, too, spelling disaster for the creative industries.” This self-indulgent moan ignores the reality that the university sector is bigger than ever and the British creative industries are booming. The Tory message is being lost in a sea of orchestrated outrage. “The country doesn’t seem interested in what we have to say,” complains one Sunak ally. But that is partly the Government’s own fault. Schools close due to concrete chaos (Image: Getty) All the blame for the concrete fiasco has been heaped on the politicians but why are professional architects not in the dock? After all, they advocated the use of this material which was unsuitable for flat roofs in a damp climate. Like so much else in the revolutionary decade of the 1960s, the resort to aerated concrete represented the triumph of theory over common sense. But an even greater crime by the profession was its enthusiasm for the destruction of our architectural heritage to make way for ugly, brutalist blocks. In the name of modernism, beauty was lost and vast swathes of our past were swept away. It was Churchill who wisely said: “Design things well in the first place as consequences often last.” Danny Cipriani, England rugby player (Image: Getty) Danny Cipriani, the priapic former England rugby player, has come up with his own extreme version of the humble brag. In a new autobiography packed with revelations about his amorous liaisons, including one with the glamorous TV presenter Kirsty Gallacher, he claims his participation in numerous threesomes left him feeling “dejected”. Piling on the psychological agony, he says that at the peak of his playing career, his habit of having sex with multiple partners in a day even amounted to a “form of selfharm”. What Cipriani has invented is the Macho Misery Boast, where exhibitionist narcissism is hidden behind the fashionable jargon of mental health victimhood. He might have massaged his ego with this tale but he’s diminished his stature. He would have done better to adopt the stance of another, far greater sportsman, the dashing post-war Australian cricketer Keith Miller, who was rumoured to have had an affair with Princess Margaret. But he resolutely kept quiet about his romantic pursuits. “No gentleman ever discusses a relationship with a lady,” he once said. I have always had a soft spot for Birmingham, ever since I went there on my first solo holiday as a teenager from Belfast in 1981. Staying at aYMCA in Erdington, I attended every day of the Ashes Test at Edgbaston where Ian Botham achieved a historic victory with a remarkable spell of bowling on the final afternoon. Perhaps invigorated by this triumph, I saw the city in a heroic light, marvelling at ITSVICTORIAN grandeur. Moreover, the place’s easy acceptance of diversity, epitomised by the cosmopolitan intake at the ERDINGTONYMCA, was so different to the sectarianism of my native Northern Ireland. But today that sense of solidity and pragmatism has vanished, as Birmingham has just declared itself bankrupt due to the reckless ineptitude of the council. Predictably, the ruling Labour Group bleats about Government underfunding and the financial consequences of an equal pay ruling, but so much of this calamity is self-inflicted. Vast sums have been squandered on a malfunctioning IT system, an expensive new library, and a sprawling bureaucracy – which features 21 officials on more than £100,000 a year. Instead of putting its house in order, the council indulged in woke gestures, like giving a series of streets new names such as “Equality Road” and “Diversity Grove”. In the 19th century, under its charismatic, innovative leader Joseph Chamberlain, Birmingham was the jewel in the crown of British local government. Today the city is a depressing symbol of municipal mismanagement. Ant and Dec at National Television Awards (Image: Shutterstock) There used to be a quango called the Monopolies Commission. If body still existed, its immediate task would be to investigate the stranglehold that Ant and Dec, have on “Best Presenter” prize at the National Television Awards, which they have won an incredible 22 years in a row. To my amazement, their public appeal seems as strong as ever. 50 years since Sir Jackie Stewart won the last of his World Driver Championship titles It is exactly 50 years since the great Sir Jackie Stewart won the last of his three World Driver Championship titles. But, having experienced a horrendous crash in 1966, he showed as much courage in campaigning for driver safety – including improved medical facilities and crash barriers – as he had done behind the wheel. “I would have been a much more popular World Champion if I had always said what people wanted to hear. I might have been dead but definitely more popular,” he wryly once said.