For a party long described as Britain’s ‘natural party of government’, the Conservatives have spent an astonishing amount of time recently behaving as if the electorate suffers from acute memory loss. Every crisis they now attempt to offer solutions to in opposition is one they helped engineer in government. Every principle they defend today is one they discarded yesterday. And every lecture on restraint or prudence is delivered with the tone of a headteacher whose school burned down on his watch.

Take Send as an example. (‘Send’ stands for special educational needs and disabilities.) After years of cuts, expansions and unfunded, changing statutory obligations to the system by which pupils with learning difficulties and disabilities are given financial and educational support, Send is now buckling. Councils are careening toward bankruptcy; tribunals are overwhelmed; diagnoses are rising faster than provision. By 2029, Send-related debts in UK councils are expected to reach £17.8 billion. Reform and Labour have dragged the crisis, kicking and screaming, into the spotlight, and the Conservatives now describe the Send system as a ‘lose, lose, lose’. But who is going to listen to........

© The Spectator