What does "background will be no barrier" actually mean?

Labour's shadow education minister Bridget Phillipson claims that "under Labour, background will be no barrier", but it's meaningless without policies to back it up

In a Paywalled article in Rupert Murdoch’s Times, Labour’s shadow education minister Bridget Phillipson claims that she wants "every child to have opportunity" and that "under Labour, background will be no barrier".

These sound like excellent objectives, but without policies to actually back it up, it’s just meaningless hot air isn’t it?

Wanting "every child to have opportunity" clearly clashes with Keir Starmer’s refusal to scrap the obscene Tory two-child policy which has driven a million kids into poverty, in order to keep punishing them for the choices of their parents.

"Opportunity for every child" clearly comes with a great big asterisk, and a disclaimer that children with more than two siblings are unworthy of the healthy nutrition, decent housing, learning materials, and extra-curricular activities that Labour doesn’t believe that these 'superfluous children' deserve.

If Labour believed in substantial wage increases that would allow parents to provide for their kids without the childcare elements of social security, maybe "opportunity for every child" would ring a bit more true, but Keir Starmer is openly hostile to above-inflation wage rises for workers, and has banned his shadow cabinet from supporting strike action, even just for inflation-matched pay.

If millions of kids are going to continue to grow up in poverty under a Labour government due to their continuation of cruel and draconian policies, and their hostility to workers’ pay rises, then maybe Phillipson believes that it’s purely the responsibility of schools to provide these "opportunities for all"?

Behind Murdoch’s paywall she writes about changing "the curriculum", but that’s going to be incredibly difficult to implement in England, after the Tories have privatised literally thousands of schools into the hands of unaccountable academy profiteers with the freedom to set their own curricula.

Anyone seeking to improve the education system would surely make it a priority to get rid of the private academy spivs who have been using school budgets as their own personal cash machines for years, paying themselves bloated executive salaries, and through dodgy untendered supply contracts.

Anyone who honestly wanted to make the education system "first class" would, at an absolute minimum, restore local authority control over schools, bring in strict new rules on executive pay at academy chains, stop the mass sell-off of school playing fields, and completely ban school supply contracts involving academy executives or their family members, or friends.

The simpler solution would be to revert academy chains back to public ownership, and cut the education profiteers out of the system altogether.

Phillipson doesn’t propose any of these things.

Apparently she’s just going to rely on the good will of the academy profiteers to stop lining their own pockets, and begin focusing on delivering "first class" education instead.

If Phillipson wants teachers to provide a "first class" education, how about offering "first class" pay in order to incentivise "first class" people into the vitally important job of teaching our kids?

Maybe we should be a bit more like Scandinavian countries that actually value teachers, rather than expecting them to keep achieving more, with fewer resources, while their wages are being continually eroded away by below-inflation pay settlements?

Then there’s the issue of student debt.

If Labour wants "background to be no barrier" one of the easiest things they could do is to stop lumbering kids from poor and ordinary backgrounds with unpayable student debts on rip-off repayment terms.

If your parents are loaded, you can get a university education without incurring obscene levels of debt, but if you’re from any kind of ordinary background then you have to rack up tens of thousands of pounds in debt, then pay a 9% aspiration tax on what should be your disposable income, to service a debt that keeps rising at 3% above the rate of inflation, probably for your entire working life.

Any politician who talks about wanting to remove "barriers" while keeping a system like this in place is talking absolute bobbins.

Then there’s the Labour Party itself.

There are barely any working class voices left in the party that was originally founded to give working people a voice in the Westminster nexus of power, and under Keir Starmer the party has continued the trend of marginalising working class politicians, as well as becoming a "hostile environment" for people of colour.

Starmer’s been so bold about slamming doors in people’s faces that he even brought in new leadership nomination rules that would have excluded every person of colour who has ever stood to become leader of the Labour Party!

The Labour Party has been almost entirely usurped by comfortably wealthy liberal capitalists, and anyone who dares stand up for the working classes, socialist principles, or the interests of people of colour gets marginalised, deselected, or outright purged.

If Labour wanted to actually provide working class people with opportunities, they could start from within by mandating all-local, all-working-class shortlists, especially in working class areas, instead of continually attempting to rig selection processes to parachute more of Starmer’s liberal-capitalist nodding dogs into every position that comes up.

The only concrete policy that Phillipson has to offer is cancellation of the unfair tax breaks that benefit private schools, which isn’t bad in its own right, but does almost nothing to deal with the gaping, festering wound that the state education system has become.

In summary, what she’s actually offering is:

Nothing on child poverty.

Nothing to restrain the greed of academy profiteers, or boot them out of the system altogether.

Nothing on empowering and rewarding good teachers, rather than continuing the trend of forcing them to do more with less.

Nothing on unpayable tuition fees on rip-off repayment terms.

Worse than nothing when it comes to the Labour Party’s own internal barriers to progression.

And perhaps most insultingly of all, she hides this unappealing "nothing pie" behind Murdoch’s paywall, so that only subscribers can have a taste of it.

When politicians like Bridget Phillipson offer marvellous things like "opportunity for all" and "background will be no barrier", it’s vital to ask them how they’re actually going to achieve these lofty ambitions, rather than just naively believing that good intentions can become good outcomes, without the required policies.