Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

So grotesque hard-right ideologue & Tory darling Katharine Birbalsingh is finally giving her first speech as the Govt's Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, having been appointed in October 2021 - to the hard-right Policy Exchange think tank.

mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…

In her speech Birbalsingh will say that success is often too narrowly defined as stories of people rising from humble backgrounds to elite jobs & will call for more focus on smaller steps up the ladder, such as 'the children of unemployed parents getting stable work'.

I'm sure you remember the Govt's controversial whitewash report of the Commission on Race & Ethnic Disparities, written largely by hand-picked culture war ideologues & given a brief to play down both structural/systemic & institutional racism in Britain.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1460691072129150978?s=20&t=_eQ-PVsm5rL9zwPiL_cDDg

Birbalsingh is just another brazenly shameless appointment, charged with getting her & the Govt's increasingly absurd & extremist ideology widely disseminated, in part by producing a partisan whitewash report - like the Race Commission Report - designed to fuel the culture war.

We already know the Social Mobility Report will read like every Mail editorial: structural inequalities don't exist, individual moral failings do; popular culture is a moral vacuum; single parents are a problem; we need tougher policing, & more discipline in stricter schools.

The Social Mobility Report will just be another re-run of the Race Report: an exercise in 'flooding the zone with shit' - a mechanism for fuelling the divisive culture war & generating 'anti-woke' headlines which will frame issues on the terms of Britain's free-market/hard-right.

Imho, Birbalsingh's goals as Social Mobility Tsar - which will be reflected in her speech - are threefold:

to stoke a divisive culture war;

to reduce expectations for poorer kids;

to claim poverty is the result of individual moral failings, rather than structural inequalities.

After 12 years of Tory misrule & forty years of neoliberal policies positioning selfish individualism as being somehow moral, UK social mobility is in a dire state - compared to other countries, the UK is clearly a 'low mobility/high inequality' society.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1532379005588054016?s=20&t=_eQ-PVsm5rL9zwPiL_cDDg

So how did a strict headmistress from an academy school get to be the Government's Social Mobility Tsar?

Birbalsigh was born in New Zealand and raised in Canada until she was 15 when her dad began lecturing at the University of Warwick.

After attending New College, Oxford, she went into teaching at state schools in south London, & in 2007 began hosting a controversial blog, To Miss with Love, under the moniker Miss Snuffy.

It's clear Birbalsingh has sought fame, power & the limelight for well over a decade.

In April 2009, her book "Singleholic" was published. The back cover states: "White men, black men, brown men... Who's better to marry? And who's better in bed? Have you ever wondered who has the biggest packet?"

theguardian.com/education/2011…

However, it wasn't her writing that made her (in)famous: Birbalsingh came to national prominence in October 2010 after criticising the British education system at that year's Conservative Party conference, and speaking in support of the party's education policies.

Birbalsingh ranted about a "culture of excuses, of low standards... a sea of bureaucracy... My experience of teaching for over a decade in five different schools has convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the system is broken, because it keeps poor children poor."

After the speech Birbalsingh was asked not to attend the school at which she taught while the governors "discuss[ed] her position". She subsequently resigned "after being asked to comply with conditions that she did not feel able to comply with".

To cut a long story short, Birbalsingh received Government support to open her own school, & having previously tried to open the Michaela Community School (MCS) in Wandsworth, the academy school finally launched in Wembley Park, Brent, in 2014.

independent.co.uk/news/education…

Fast forward to January 2021, & Birbalsingh spoke at a debate hosted by the free market Henry Jackson Society, where she asserted her opposition to what she described as the growth of "woke culture" in education. By October, she was Social Mobility Tsar.

henryjacksonsociety.org/members-conten…

I've written at length in this #thread about how controversial, ideological, & sometimes dangerously irresponsible many of Breitbart, Telegraph, Tufton St & GB "News" favourite Birbalsingh's ideas & practices are as head teacher at Michaela school.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1447332985066434565?s=20&t=Z_oPeiBXsB6ma0EGJjyvRw

Basically, living embodiment of the Mail Birbalsingh believes everyone should STFU about poverty, inequality & racism.

I want to finish this thread with some information about the place where she's giving her first speech as Social Mobility Tsar: the Policy Exchange think tank.

Controversial ultra-free-market think tank Policy Exchange was set up in 2002 by a group including Nicholas Boles, Michael Gove & Francis Maude. It is one of the three least transparent think tanks in terms of funding - but we know US Libertarian billionaires are supporters.

More appropriately termed a lobby group funded by dark money, it is the group that Boris Johnson’s government uses most.

Policy Exchange has played an important role in shifting power away from rival institutions and into the prime minister’s office.

As @GeorgeMonbiot revealed last year, for several years Policy Exchange has been building a case for curtailing the judiciary, providing ammunition for the Govt’s attack on judicial review, which enables citizens to sue the government to uphold the law.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Policy Exchange has called for the PM's office to have even greater powers “to develop & direct policy change” through the civil service, & to appoint leaders of public bodies whose “culture & values” align with government’s aims - hence Birbalsingh's appointment.

In 2020, Policy Exchange published a polemic claiming Extinction Rebellion is led by dangerous extremists. As usual, it was widely covered by the media. It's how it works: opaquely funded free-market organisations dominate the UK news media, & rarely are voters given any context.

Less discussed was that Policy Exchange received funding from the power company Drax, the trade association Energy UK, & the gas companies E.ON & Cadent, whose fossil-fuel investments are threatened by environmental activism.

David Frost of Irish border fiasco fame was a member of the Advisory Council of the eurosceptic think tank Open Europe, which merged with the free-market fundamentalist Policy Exchange think tank in 2020. But the public are oblivious to these networks.

https://twitter.com/DavidGHFrost/status/1501094579453534210?s=20&t=Krq6IYP2OvQtnNYE7iCusg

#DowningStreetParty attendee Henry Newman, a close friend of Boris Johnson's wife, Carrie Symonds, was Toby Young's "role model", & was director of think tank Open Europe before it merged with Policy Exchange. Toby Young encouraged & helped Birbalsingh to set up Michaela school.

Finally, I'd never heard of Boris Johnson's senior advisor & one of Carrie Symond's "favourite people" Henry Newman, but last year I started exploring Fraser Nelson's & Andrew Neil's connections to the antidemocratic Orbán regime, & 'it's a small world'...

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1387338256241528832?s=20&t=dbf4Gh1fyFvNwm61y3xL8A

#THREAD on Katharine Birbalsingh's first speech since becoming the Government's Social Mobility Tsar - predictably delivered to the dodgy opaquely funded free-market lobbying group Policy Exchange, which pushes free-market/libertarian-right ideology:

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1534864236026945537?s=20&t=qa6z8PlzzvTkU-QY_YEVRQ