Boris Johnson can deny it all he wants – we know exactly who’s responsible for wrecking education

The prime minister’s ability to hoodwink the nation with slogans seems to have given him the impression that we’re stupid. We are not

Blame Boris Johnson.

That’s why the schools aren’t open. That’s why the disarray over how to go about it and ensure those left on the wrong side of Britain’s two-tier system continues.

Blame. Boris.

The issue of schools is once again front and centre, with the two-metre social distancing rule set to be dropped to facilitate reopening in September now, the cack-handed 15 June partial reopening plan has gone down the toilet.

Our daughter’s school is going to open its doors on a very limited basis. When it consulted with parents, it found only a limited number wanted to take part in reopening. I found that illuminating.

The shrill voices of the "reopen come what may and f** safety, the vulnerable, teachers, and teaching assistants, who should all just bally well take one for the team", have been heard loudly recently.

The quieter opposition of those who want this to be done right have been sidelined. So they have no choice but to vote with their feet. Had our daughter been in one of the year groups slated to return to primary school, we would have been among them.

Can you blame us?

We want this to be done right. Safely, and sensibly, with a view to avoiding a second wave of infection.

Johnson inspires about as much confidence in that happening as a drunken train driver with the responsibility of track-testing the first super-fast locomotive to run on the HS2 tracks when they’re finally built.

His performance at Prime Minister's Questions earlier this week was a case in point. Responding to a Keir Starmer thrust concerning schools, his allegation about inconsistency in Labour’s position was, I suppose, fair enough given the knockabout nature of this dispiriting part of British political life.

But telling the Labour leader to get his “friends in the left-wing teaching unions” on board was typical Johnson: Shallow, stupid, counterproductive.

When a policy has blown up in his face as a result of his own ineptitude, he inevitably casts around for people to blame, and so much the better if it’s a Tory cliche. Those blasted unions eh? How dare they give a toss about their members, their members’ families, the children they teach and their families.

In trashing teachers and their representatives, people who care about children a lot more deeply than he apparently does, he’s demonising the very people he needs and should be working with to make sure this is done properly.

It’s so breathtakingly, spectacularly knuckleheaded that I was left wondering whether the nation had been parachuted into the middle of an episode of the Twilight Zone.

But even its writers would struggle to come up with as surreal a dystopia as the one Johnson and his svengali Dominic Cummings have created.

There’s a reason Donald Trump is the prime minister’s BFF. He provides Johnson with a shield. Look out kids: It could be even worse. You could be over there.

It’s slim comfort because, in the race to the bottom, Britain has been in the lead before, and had the police murder of George Floyd not sparked unrest around the world, it might still have its nose in front.

The reality is school leaders have been quietly tearing their hair out. New guidance seems to emerge every five minutes from a Department for Education run by the hapless Gavin Williamson, whose chief qualification for the job appears to be that he was prepared to screw over Theresa May to Johnson’s benefit.

I’m told that there have been meetings with unions. But they’ve been characterised by the government saying: “This is what we’re going to do, now you run along and sort it out or we’ll stomp around those TV stations we’re still just about talking to (so, not Channel 4) and blame it on leftie union wreckers.”

Johnson’s ability to hoodwink a substantial proportion of the nation with slogans cooked up by Cummings at his Durham castle seems to have given him the impression that they’re stupid. They are not. When it comes to their children, the public tend to be cautious and watchful. They’re not going to throw their kids off the top deck of a bus to assuage Johnson's fragile ego.

The problem is solvable. If the government was willing to sit down with the unions and talk things through on the basis of working together to fix a pressing problem, and to do so in good faith, then who knows what could be achieved?

There’s a general recognition that children desperately need their education, that the disadvantaged ones in particular are being left behind. Solutions urgently need to be formulated and there’s a willingness among the teaching profession to engage.

Tapping into that could work wonders. I spoke to one source who told me that even after all Johnson’s crap, they didn’t want to come out all guns blazing against him because they preferred to talk and make it work, because opting for a more confrontational approach would be counterproductive to that aim.

Yet despite this, the PM and his pals are still stomping around, ignoring critical voices; briefing their favoured shills to put the blame on others; risking the lives of Britons and their children. Because, hey, what’s adding a few more deaths to the 20,000-plus avoidable ones the science says we’ve already witnessed as a result of the government’s failures?

Here it is again, that piece of alliteration for who really should be held to account for this: It’s Boris. Blame Boris.