Gillian Keegan’s honesty is refreshing – more MPs should take note

Gillian Keegan, who has been education secretary for six weeks, has already made an impression. Her very appointment was a statement, because she didn’t do A-levels. She left school at 16 to be an apprentice at a car factory in Kirkby, and later took a degree in business studies at Liverpool John Moores University.

When she became a junior minister for apprenticeships and skills, she was unusual as a minister for something she had done herself. Last month, 11 days after her appointment to the cabinet, she was interviewed by Nick Robinson of the BBC, a 40-minute interview that more experienced cabinet ministers might hesitate before agreeing to. She came across as straightforward and confident, and one of the interesting things she said was that cabinet ministers should just admit it when they don’t know something.

A few days ago, in her first appearance as secretary of state before the Education Committee of MPs, which scrutinises her department, she was as good as her word. Pressed by Andrew Lewer, a Conservative MP who wants more grammar schools, she said: “I honestly don’t have any strong views on grammar schools, but I do have a strong view that 93 per cent of children will never get to go to one… and we need to make sure that they have a fantastic education.”

How refreshing for a minister not to have an opinion. Of course, her lack of an opinion is partly tactical, and it was obvious from the rest of her sentence that she doesn’t agree with a big expansion of grammar schools. She said the priority was to press ahead with the academies programme.

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She has to navigate a Conservative Party that is deeply attached to the idea of rolling back the comprehensive school revolution, even though it began 64 years ago. Both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak told party members what they wanted to hear during the leadership election campaign. But whereas Truss seems to have expected Kit Malthouse, her education secretary, to do something about it, Sunak seems to have reverted to the policy that the Conservatives have followed in government since 2010 – and indeed that Labour pursued before that. The remaining grammar schools are tolerated, allowed to expand under limited conditions, but the focus is on raising standards in the non-selective majority of schools.

If only more ministers could say that they do not have strong views on simplistic solutions to complex problems. If only they could explain, for example, that it is not possible, morally or legally, just to “send back” people arriving in small boats. Or that you can’t have tax cuts and higher spending indefinitely – it is a shame that our political system allowed such an unrealistic view to prevail, however briefly.

Let us have fewer Trusses and more Keegans.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator