Don't mess up.
He's got quite the to-do list
Dear lovely people,
It’s the last day of the school year. The Commons wrapped up yesterday.
We launched into this session in September full of hope and expectation; opportunity and potential.
As the curtain comes down, we can look back. What have we achieved?
Except, it’s actually really hard. It’s difficult to look back on a year. What happened in October? Or February? Nobody knows.
I took my son Alfred (Year 9 ) to school this morning and asked him what he’s enjoyed this year. He gave three things (going on a school trip to France, playing tennis with his mum, a band camp), all of which happened in the last 6 weeks.
The events of May are lost, let alone November.
Instead, we’re left with the emotion. Years of relief and exhaustion, pushing to get over the line. It’s a wall of relief, it’s a wall of excitement. It’s nostalgia, it’s mourning for as year that’s gone (and the years before that are longer gone).
Perhaps I feel it more than most. I was at school, then I was a teacher, then I worked in Parliament, then I was a teacher again. Now I work around Parliament and my children’s school year. I have always been in hock to the school calendar.
Also, I feel emotions pretty strongly anyway.
The difference this year is that, having made it to the finish line, broken and proud, there is no rest.
Many schools will throw their gates open early today. Half days are in order. Simultaneously, we will have a new leader of the Labour Party.
Señor Burnham will be announced at midday. He will make a speech at 2.30 or so (just in time for those leaving school for the year to get home and switch on the TV).
On Monday, he will be Prime Minister.
There is no time to look back and reflect. Wednesday saw a vaguely tedious farewell PMQs for Sir Keir. He took an emotional trip to Ukraine yesterday.
We’re jumping from emotional endings to new pencil cases in a matter of hours.
Plunged into relentless new beginnings.
You may like to schedule in some time for reflection. Possibly 11.30-11.35 this morning.
Peace and love,
Tatton x
ps - You’ll be given a break from these emails for at least a couple of weeks. I’m off to Florence and Tuscany for a bit. Throwing in some Sardinia action, too.
There may be an email mid-August, it depends how much I’ve missed you, really. I suspect I will write.
This is the last email of term. It’s been a long old slog.
If you’ve enjoyed these weekly letters, you can buy me a ‘coffee’ here.
I say ‘coffee’ because that’s what the website. The money will almost certainly be spend on cold drinks on warm evenings in Italy as The Wonderful Katie and I celebrate our first anniversary.
If you’d like more of this, I think I’ll be starting a Monday briefing email for paid subscribers in the autumn.
If that’s something you’d be up for, please pledge now, using the various buttons that Substack likes to insert. If there is enough demand, it will happen!
It's all we're skilled in
We will be shipbuilding
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearlsElvis Costello
(but I like the Suede version from the 1995 ‘Help’ War Child album)
Tricky beginnings (and middles and probably endings)
The problem about the Daily Telegraph is that you can never quite tell what they think about things.
Last night they sent out a push notification with the headline ‘‘A legacy of surrender’: How Andy Burnham’s first week could break Britain’. Today’s front page story is ‘Burnham has become a global laughing stock before even entering No 10’. There is also a prominent headline that reads ‘Burnham is coming for your home’.
Like I say, it’s a hard to tell where they stand.
Perhaps that paper’s output can be dismissed. They were never going to swoon over a new Labour PM. The Guardian, though, might be expected to be more supportive.
They are a little cage-y in their tone. Their headline right now: ’Burnham to say his government will be ‘unashamedly Labour’ in first speech as party leader’. They also have a prominent article entitled ‘‘Bizarre choice’: business and Labour puzzle over Shabana Mahmood as future chancellor’.
It’s hard to find anyone anywhere - outside of slightly breathless interviews with Labour MPs - that is effusive about the incoming Mr B.
I have just received an email from my sons’ school with a ‘food map of Faversham’ for the summer holidays. The Umbrella will be giving out free packed lunches, Leo’s Lounge will be doing free cereal, fruit and juice from 9am-11am on weekdays. There is a scheme to co-ordinate neighbours to drop round a portion or two of their cooked meals.
This is not as a result of a natural disaster. This is not a temporary relief effort.
This is everyday life in Britain in 2026.
We are starting the school holidays with the knowledge that there will be many families who can’t afford to feed their children.
There is consensus in Westminster that the first duty of a government is Defence. We have to keep our country safe from nations and other baddies who would do us harm.
Our new leader said as much in an online video he released last night.
If that’s the first priority, the second must, surely, be tackling poverty. The number of people who are chronically reliant on charity to avoid hunger is a national disgrace.
Of course, poverty is very hard to deal with. It’s deeply entrenched in some communities who are entirely left behind.
We’re told that ‘Manchesterism’ is the future and sold the success of the city will be spread around the country. There have been huge productivity gains in the city. Brand new buildings. A sense of purpose.
Also, Manchester is the 4th most deprived council out of 296 in England. The Church of England led ‘Greater Manchester Together’ estimate there are 620,000 people - including over 200,000 children - ‘living in poverty and struggling to put food on the table’ in the area.
They point out that ‘Food poverty is worse diet, worse access, worse health, higher percentage of income on food and less choice from a restricted range of foods. Above all food poverty is about less or almost no consumption of fruit and vegetables.’
This is the Manchester that we are promised the country can emulate.
In Makerfield, bus services declined by 37% from 2010 - 2023. The vaunted bus successes of the Greater Manchester area do not seem to reach all postcodes. There are only 22 public electric car chargers in the entire constituency.
It’s not just a human and empathetic issue. Cold hard economics wants to end poverty. We want people to be able to achieve their potential.
People living in poverty have worse health outcomes, which leads to higher bills for the NHS, higher disability benefits and lower productivity / tax revenue.
Alas, taking people out of poverty is hard.
The video shared last night featured The Burnhamator promising to ‘spend political capital’ on social care. He talked about the biggest expansion of council houses since the dinosaurs (or, maybe the post war period). He has previously spoken about getting people back into work. The importance of libraries for every child.
We don’t know much about his policies, but the ones we do know about do seem to have a poverty focus. He can see the problem, even if he couldn’t solve it in Manchester.
On the eve of this new beginning, please join me in raising a glass to this new regime. Whatever your political leaning, we need him to succeed. Next summer, maybe we can have fewer children needing a ‘food map of Faversham’.
Señor Burnham - the future is in your hands. Please, please don’t mess it up.
The House of Commons is in recess until September. Efforts to bring Mr B into the chamber to face questions were seen off by Labour who don’t seem keen on scrutiny.
The Lords are doing their thing and working through some important bits and bobs until Thursday 23rd.
The BBC published a story about how to cope with England losing the football. Talking, walking, accepting. I don’t know if it was an intentional way to start a conversation about mental wellbeing, but it works well.
If we rely on stereotypes a little, many of the supporters most crushed by the whole thing are the hardest to reach with mental health chat.
I think that we need a similar post from the BBC about how to cope with the emotions of the last day of the summer term.
Be well x
I'm pretty sure a lot of schools have been on holiday for 2 weeks already