Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Does Gillian Keegan deserve some credit?

Credit: Getty Images

Gillian Keegan’s Commons statement on the school concrete crisis will not be the most memorable contribution the Education Secretary made today: that award goes to her hot mic moment a few hours before where she appeared to suggest that people should be grateful for what she was doing and that others hadn’t been doing anything at all. Both could of course be true, and though she didn’t repeat what she had described in her apology as her ‘choice’ language, she did make points to MPs that backed up her ‘fucking good job’ argument.

It was a very uncomfortable session, naturally, because Labour went on the attack about this being the latest sign of a crumbling country neglected by the Conservatives. Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson called this ‘the defining image of 13 years of Conservative government, children cowering under steel props to stop the ceiling falling in on their heads’.

Isabel Hardman
Written by
Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.

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