Current events around the world, and with specific reference to this week’s visit of the President of the United States as well as peace talks around the Gaza crisis and the war in Ukraine, reminds us all that progress around problems (and finding their solution) can’t be made unless all parties are included in the conversation. As the general title of my blog suggests (A Principled View), should not we all call a spade a spade to remind people of the work that has to be done? Perhaps not, and that’s where Diplomacy comes in! It’s as unwise to gloss over the challenges as it is to call out that it’s a ‘bloody shovel’.

Over my time as a headteacher, I’ve carried to staff meetings a small figurine, see below, identifying that, as often as not, someone has had to ‘suck it up’, go the hard yards and ‘Grin & Bear It’. It’s been really useful to carry this ‘GBI’ statue, some times associated with a bottle of pop or Amazon voucher, because when all said and done’, a colleague or team has stood up and carried a significant load, unexpected to either their job description or pay grade. Inevitably this is the diplomatic view to take, to appreciate the support has been given and to recognise the pain and inconvenience that came with it.

I don’t support that King Charles and the Royal Household had too many options when last Summer the Prime Minister encouraged him to invite ‘The Donald’ for the Royal Visit just witnessed. Over the 2 days of Red Carpet, treatment, including the fly past, the parachute jump, the Castle banquet and umpteen photo calls, it’s clear that both King and President have confirmed the that the close relationship between both countries is of vital importance, and probably not just to us, but the wider world as well. Sure there were legitimate protests around the country, for some the sycophancy, for others the blind eye being turned to previous acts, to yet more the failure to act with determination to stay the hand of Putin or Netanyahu spoke of ‘empty promises, never to be fulfilled.

Sir Winston Churchill had an alternative view on Diplomacy, highlighting that if the outcome of such discussions were to be a victory for the ‘home team’, then the work to be done had to be result-focused. The reality of our country’s situation at the time was that Neville Chamberlain glossed over the problem; after signing the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, which allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland in exchange for a promise of no further territorial expansion, Chamberlain declared “Peace for our time” on September 30, 1938, after signing the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, which allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland in exchange for a promise of no further territorial expansion. We know how that went, as a year later, the Second World War broke out! See the poster at the bottom, which expresses Churchill’s approach really well.

In whatever life you lead, be that private or public, and wherever you are in the hierarchy of life itself, being sure your voice is heard is really important. You can measure the quality of the people you are working with by whether they are open to listening and hearing your point of view. It’s the nature of life that the parties could disagree, yet the quality of the discussion will always highlight the there has been clarity of purpose and that the respect for both parties has been maintained. Prior to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the American political activist, in support for Trump’s MAGA campaign expressed some pretty extreme views which many would take great exception to. I’d watched his various debates with students from the Cambridge Union, exceptional short exchanges of views, from which I suspect we’d have to declare a draw when time was called. What I do respect is that Kirk was prepared all the time to debate the issues, to pursued and take the hit if he lost the argument on the day.

Kirk’s murder was completely unacceptable, as all such crimes across the world are. The subsequent further polarisation of views clearly show we are now further away from developing a consensus around the way our collective societies should behave. I am deeply concerned by the extreme left’s Fabian views of the direction of travel they wish, that being the peaceful takeover of our values led, meritocratic, democratic society and its replacement by a socialist society, believing that all private property is theft and that we are best being ‘nationalised’ to a common view point. Their coat of arms carries a ‘Wolf in Sheep’s clothing, so we need to very afraid, because their activist sit at the heart of the current Labour government,

Opinion polls show that more generally that the voice of the right wing is now dominant, with Reform led by Nigel Farage leading the way. The promises they bring are as likely to be as hollow as those that Labour expressed as they sought power (save the NHS and Smash the Gangs) or as they were by the Brexiteers a decade go as they sought to persuade us that leaving the EU would save us billions, to be directed to save the NHS and permit our economy to grow so much more rapidly. The reasoned middle way has ‘disappeared’ for the time being, and it seems we are returning to the potential bankrupt ideas of the 1970s and 1990s.

So why am I writing this political take in an Academic’s blog usually reserved for Education matters? It’s quite clear that the expected nursery and school provision of services to parents and children are now hitting the ‘requirements to change’, without reasoned discussions or even inclusion of the related parties affected. Changes to VAT, funding for nurseries & Ofsted inspection reports, new education acts to renationalise state academies and review the SEN funding for those with additional needs to reduce the current spend dramatically are all taking place WITHOUt consultation. The latter are not manifesto promises, yet the DfE snowplough moves relentlessly onwards and the politicians defending them publicly defend their ‘improvements’, in the the face of the sector’s growing anxiety that the outcomes are going to be so much worse for the children in our care.

As senior, sector professional, I will keep calling this out. At its best, the Department for Education has done and will continue to develop a system for education the envy of the world. Yet, with politicians changing the rules daily, trumpeting like Chamberlain did 60+ years ago that all is well, keep calm and carry on, to be fair, I’ll side with Winston Churchill. I just hope there is someone out there in authority that wants to listen to me.