Why schools should stay shut

Has the stock of any politician fallen more sharply, these past three or four years, than that of Shami Chakrabarti? As the leader of Liberty, and an almost weekly performer on the BBC’s Question Time, she was a respected purveyor of leftish sanctimony to the masses, a humourless voice of conscience and, I think, self-regard. The battles she fought then were at least, in the main, on the side of decency — and while we might have found her a little trying and even bumptious, there seemed no doubt that here was a young woman motivated by principle.

That notion was swiftly expunged when she accepted a brief from Jeremy Corbyn to whitewash anti-Semitism in the Labour party via an ‘independent inquiry’ headed by herself. She renounced any semblance of impartiality immediately by joining the Labour party, and produced a report which an awful lot of Jewish people felt lacked a little, you know, rigour. She was swiftly rewarded with the job of shadow attorney general — but any belief we might have had in her has now evaporated. I’m sure it wasn’t as simple as ‘Look, love — clear us of hating the Red Sea Pedestrians and we’ll bung you a top job.’ But that is how it looked to an awful lot of people.

Now she’s even lost that post and, sadly, far more ludicrous BAME harridans have replaced her on Question Time, spouting victimhood whining and frankly racist bile. Shami’s most recent contribution to the political debate has been an article of characteristically lumpen and clichéd adolescent sarcasm, headlined: ‘Since when did teacher–shaming become Britain’s national sport?’ Oh, Shami. This would have been dumb enough coming from anyone, but emanating from a woman whose disdain for Britain’s teachers was so fathomlessly vast that she had her son educated at one of the most expensive private schools in the country, Dulwich College, it kind of smacked a little of hypocrisy as well as stupidity.