Can Gavin Williamson limit the impact of school closures?

It is much harder being an embattled minister in the socially distanced Commons than in normal times. There is no group of supportive MPs to arrange behind you, no ability to organise sympathetic noises from the backbenches as you give your statement explaining why you’ve taken a last-minute decision to close all schools when you said you wouldn’t and had been threatening councils who were trying to do so just before Christmas with legal action, and why you’ve spent the past few weeks insisting that exams would go ahead in the summer, only to cancel them this week too. On this charge sheet, Gavin Williamson would have struggled in any Commons setting when he explained why the government had changed its mind at the last minute. Perhaps, in fact, it was a mercy that he didn’t have a packed Chamber to address this afternoon, as chances are he would have faced a wall of noisy mockery and heckling from the Opposition benches.