Prepare for a ‘war on woke’ if Kemi Badenoch replaces Gavin Williamson

Since becoming Labour leader, Keir Starmer has usually avoided making knee-jerk opposition calls for a minister to resign when they are in trouble. But even he feels confident enough that he is pushing at an open door in demanding that Boris Johnson sacks Gavin Williamson, the education secretary.

This week’s A-level and GCSE results are a painful reminder of last summer’s fiasco over exam grades, since then Williamson has been on the political equivalent of death row. He has not recovered his authority and has a relatively low media profile for such an important job. His lack of clout is one reason why the Treasury was able to veto the much-needed £15bn Covid catch-up plan for schools proposed by Kevan Collins, the government’s catch-up tsar, who resigned as a result in June.

Indeed, it is remarkable that Williamson is still in his post, an example of Johnson’s capacity to put off difficult decisions to another day – in this case, an overdue cabinet reshuffle. The only question now is whether Williamson returns to the backbenches or clings on to a cabinet post, probably as leader of the Commons. Allies of the former chief whip have reheated their well-worn argument that he “knows where the bodies are” – a not very veiled threat that he could cause trouble for Johnson from the backbenches.

There is speculation Johnson will name Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister and exchequer secretary to the Treasury, as the next education secretary when he shakes up his cabinet team, either after the Tory conference in October or in the new year. 

She has been seen as a rising Tory star since entering the Commons in 2017 but would be a controversial appointment. The 41-year-old is said to be favoured for what would be a big promotion to the education job by Munira Mirza, head of the Downing Street policy unit, and her husband, the Tory fixer Dougie Smith, who are the chief architects of the government’s attacks on “wokery”. Badenoch is fully signed up to this agenda, which leaves some Tories cold; critics  believe it is divisive and counterproductive.

She and Mirza helped to shape a much-criticised government review of race and ethnic disparities which found that the UK is not “institutionally racist”. Badenoch rejected calls for more teaching of black history in schools. She attracted headlines after accusing a Black journalist on Twitter of asking “creepy and bizarre” questions about why she did not appear in a video to boost vaccine take-up among ethnic minorities. Some Tory MPs believe the affair raised questions about her judgment; they would rather Johnson appointed a more experienced figure – such as Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccines minister – to the department for education.

Although Johnson insists he does not want a culture war, making Badenoch education secretary could look an attractive prospect to him. She would have a clear agenda, fight the Treasury hard for money and push hard for reform – something Johnson allies believe has been neglected during the pandemic. She would relish a fight against “no platforming” in universities and taking on the teaching unions. The Tories would then run an aggressive campaign to portray Labour as in the unions’ pockets and on the wrong side of the reform argument.

However, the risk for Johnson is that Badenoch would use the education brief as a platform for a “war on woke” which might backfire on the Tories, as Priti Patel’s disastrous opposition to England players taking the knee did during Euro 2020.

Our schools are too important to become a political playground for an anti-woke crusade. That would be a diversion from the much more vital task that Johnson purports to champion – levelling up. As this week’s exam results confirmed, there is much of that to be done between the state and private sectors and between different regions.