Listen: Department for Education’s new patriotic anthem

After last year’s A-level results day debacle and the ongoing saga about catch-up funding, Gavin Williamson is one of the bookies’ favourites for the Cabinet chop. The incumbent education secretary has suffered some brutal headlines in the last 12 months and appears to have stumbled on the culture wars as his best bet for ministerial survival, jumping headfirst earlier this month into the Oxford Queen portrait row.

Now though Williamson’s department might have overstepped itself in its zeal to promote British values. DfE is ‘encouraging schools across the UK to celebrate One Britain One Nation Day’ on Friday as part a long-running campaign founded by former police chief Kash Singh. It is trying to get schools on June 25 to ‘encourage every child in your school to clap for a minute to recognise, embrace and pay tribute to all those people who helped during the Covid 19 pandemic crisis’ and sing the ‘One Britain One Nation’ anthem.