Politicians give speeches all the time, but with differing levels of significance. Can you think of a genuinely important political speech given by a minister this week?
Maybe your answer is Rishi Sunak’s fiscal statement, and I’m not going to suggest that speech isn’t a big deal. It is.
But I am going to make the case for a speech given today by Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary. The speech was to the Social Market Foundation, the think-tank I run, so I obviously have an interest here.
Nonetheless, I think Williamson’s speech deserves to be seen as a big deal. While Sunak had important things to say on important issues which are talked about a lot, Williamson’s speech is about people that don’t get mentioned enough in politics: those who use further education and technical training.
As he points out, these people – who make up more than 50 per cent of the population – are too often forgotten in a national conversation dominated by those who went to university, whose kids will go to university and who assume that going to university is the ‘normal’ thing to do.
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