Rishi Sunak on the back foot at start of new political year

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Rishi Sunak has been forced into limbo at the start of a new political year as a crumbling crisis in Britain’s schools engulfs his government as he braces for two dangerous parliamentary by-elections.

A former senior civil servant accused the prime minister on Monday of slashing the school building budget, while Education Minister Gillian Keegan blamed others for failing to replace dangerous concrete in the country’s classrooms.

“Everyone else just sat there and didn’t do anything,” she said, in what she believed to be off-camera remarks. Keegan claims she doesn’t get credit for “doing a terrific job” in tackling the issue.

Sunak is planning to restart in the autumn on the back of signs of economic recovery, but with Conservative MPs returning from a 45-day summer break, the party is firmly on the defensive.

Sunak’s problems were exacerbated when he learned of the prospect of two by-elections this autumn in normally safe Conservative seats that Labor was expected to win.

Tamworth Conservative MP Chris Pincher was suspended from the House of Commons for eight weeks last year for drunkenly molesting two men but lost his appeal. The moratorium is expected to have the support of lawmakers.

The result would trigger a recall petition under which Pincher voters could call for a by-election if they get 10 percent of their signatures. He won the seat with a majority of nearly 20,000 votes in the 2019 general election.

Former culture secretary Nadine Dorries finally followed through on his threat to resign as Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire last month ahead of a by-election expected next month. She won the seat in 2019 with a majority of nearly 25,000 votes.

Meanwhile, Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer has carried out what is expected to be a final major reshuffle of his top team ahead of the next general election, and promoted several MPs who played a key role in Tony Blair’s government.

Former business secretary and former adviser to Blair, Pat McFadden, will run Labour’s campaign. He will work alongside Starmer’s new chief of staff, former senior civil servant Sue Gray, to prepare Labor for power.

Starmer’s allies have sought to contrast Labor’s smooth reshuffle with the chaos in Sunak’s party. “It adds to a sense of ‘doom’ – the government is out of ideas, out of time,” said one person.

Sunak undertook a small reshuffle last week and reshuffled his No. 10 team ahead of next month’s Conservative Party conference, where he hopes to set a new agenda for Britain.

But on Monday, Sunak was drawn back in time again, with former Education Department permanent secretary Jonathan Slater accusing him of starving schools of funds to repair collapsed buildings.

Slater said his former department warned the government in 2018 that 300 to 400 schools would need to be rebuilt each year because they were made of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, which had a limited design life and meant the buildings were at risk of collapsing.

He told the BBC: “We’re not just saying there’s a significant risk of death, we’re saying there’s a significant risk of life if the program isn’t funded.”

At the time, the government was funding only 100 school replacements a year, Slater added.

He said the decision to halve the redevelopment program further, from 100 schools a year to just 1,000, was followed by the completion of a government spending review in 2020, with Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and Sunak as Chancellor of the Exchequer. 50, although his department wants to double that number to 200.

Sunak said one of the first things he did as prime minister was announce a 10-year rebuilding plan that would rebuild 500 schools, the equivalent of 50 schools a year. Downing Street said this was broadly in line with the delivery of new schools over the past decade.

Sunak said it was “completely wrong” to say he had failed to provide adequate funding for school repairs. Number 10 said the number of schools affected by the dangerous concrete would be “hundreds, not thousands”.

Keegan was forced to apologize for her “choice of language” in her “off-the-cuff” remarks, which were broadcast by ITV News.

The education secretary said she wasn’t specifically blaming anyone for “sitting around”, adding that she was making “difficult decisions” to correct decades of well-known deficiencies in schools.