Day by day Andy Burnham’s small-c conservatism grows more conspicuous. In his piece for yesterday’s Times, headlined “We’ll value the hard hat as much as the graduation cap”, he began with the remarkable observation that one place is not the same as another:
“Travel a few miles anywhere in Britain, and things begin to change. The accents, the food, the footy kits that kids wear — and the history we’re proud of too. Every place has its own story. It’s one of the things I love about this country. But for all that diversity, we still educate our kids like every place is the same.”
Each school, he went on to say, should prepare its pupils for work in the most promising industries in its own locality, by offering from the age of 14 the technical education which is needed there.
What a glimpse of the obvious, some will retort. We have been worrying for well over a hundred years that our technical education is not up to the standard of our competitors.
By setting a target at the Labour Party Conference in September 1999 of “50 per cent of young adults going into higher education in the next century”, Tony Blair unfortunately spurred a headlong expansion of the university sector, where the number of undergraduate degrees awarded rose from 265,000 in 1999-2000 to 414,000 in 2016-2017.
It is today far more straightforward, when one is preparing to leave school, to apply through the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service to go to university, rather than to find a local apprenticeship.
Filling in one UCAS form enables a school leaver to apply to five universities, whereas finding an apprenticeship might easily demand 25 or 30 separate applications.
Meanwhile small firms are deterred from seeking out apprentices by the time needed to find suitable candidates.
UCAS, by status a charity, works well: it even has a help line on which one can speak to a human being who will help one to sort out any problems.
One hesitates to interfere with an organisation which actually works, but it would surely be reasonable to add a section on the form which a school leaver can fill in if happy to be contacted by apprenticeship providers.
Those providers will, as Burnham recognises, be different in each locality. He relates in his Times piece that in Manchester, many young people were unaware that thousands of jobs were being created in the digital economy, and even if they knew about these jobs they had no idea how to set about getting them, so the Manchester Baccalaureate was created to bridge the gap between schools and employers.
Burnham’s announcement has been interpreted as a rejection of Blair’s approach, which it is.
But far more importantly, it is a rejection of the approach taken by the 1945-51 Labour Government, which nationalised the commanding heights of the British economy on the arrogant assumption that “the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves” (Douglas Jay, The Socialist Case, 1937).
As David Skelton pointed out some years ago in Little Platoons, the gentleman in Whitehall, more particularly the gentleman in the Treasury, was unable to provide the investment needed to keep the great steel works at Consett, in County Durham, at the cutting edge of technology, as it had been for much of the past century, providing skilled employment and apprenticeships to engineers, metallurgists, chemists and craftsmen.
The works closed in 1980, with dreadful consequences for Consett, but the seeds of its downfall had been sown many years before, when control was centralised in Whitehall, almost 300 miles away.
Will Burnham really bring back local control? He well knows how to articulate small-c conservative aspirations, but one may doubt whether he will have the slightest ability to give effect to those aspirations.
A big state, paid for by taxing business to the hilt and borrowing at ruinous rates of interest, is an article of faith for the great mass of his backbenchers. They will resist any meaningful spending cuts and any serious welfare reform.
Burnham declares that he wants to bring down the number of NEETs, young people Not in Education, Employment or Training. So does any sensible person.
But does the fledgling Prime Minister have the guts to take on his own party? Will he do more than tinker round the edges of the problem, while uttering pious aspirations in a matey tone of voice?
Does he accept that to find apprenticeships and jobs for young people, the country must have a robust, confident, expanding economy, not businesses mulcted of every last penny, with entrepreneurs and investors taxed into flight?
The Conservatives will have the chance at the next general election, whenever it is held, to request a mandate for the serious reform the country requires.