A minister at the Department for Education has an hour after Starmer’s conference speech complained that she has “no idea” when the government is meant to implement the pledge to get two-thirds of children to university OR ‘gold-standard’ apprenticeships. Scrapping a now-irrelevant Blairite target that no one had any idea was still in place..
Education minister Georgia Gould was asked at a Labour Conference event after Starmer’s speech whether there was a date for the policy. She responded: “I have no idea. I know as much as you do.” Good to see DFE was kept appropriately in the dark…
Gould also declined to specify if it was a pledge or an ambition. She did add that Jacqui Smith is a minister in both DFE and DWP so would be able to co-ordinate the execution of the pledge. See how that goes…
Starmer spoke to Nick Robinson for the Today Programme on Polanski’s criticism of the Golders Green police officers:
“I want everybody just to imagine what it might be like. You’re trying to arrest someone who has already attacked two people and has no regard for life. We know that tasers were fired. I know from my own experience with the police, that there are only two shots in a taser, and once you’ve shot them, there’s nothing left. There’s a guy on the ground, he’s got a rucksack on. And I don’t know what was going through the mind of those officers, but if I was there, I’d be thinking, he’s going to detonate something. He’s going to blow me up and everybody around here. In those circumstances, I think you can quite see why what could have gone through their mind is, we need to do whatever we can to disable this guy…
Now, when I then see Zack Polanski come out and retweet or support a criticism of that, I think it’s disgraceful… He’s not fit to lead any political party.”