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Furious Keir Starmer ‘to sack Labour cabinet member’ who’s even worse than Ed Miliband.uk

The knives are out for a member of the Labour cabinet who risks inflicting even more damage on the UK than Ed Miliband.

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Keir Starmer has his eye on an even bigger problem than Ed Miliband (Image: Getty)

The UK’s controversial Energy Secretary appears to be safe for now, sadly. In fact, if there were a leadership election today, Labour members would probably back him over the embattled Prime Minister.

Keir Starmer has no desire to sack Chancellor Rachel Reeves either, even though she’s sunk the UK economy by making one horrendous blunder after another.

Unless something dramatic happens (and with these two, it could), Starmer is sticking with them.

Miliband has been partly blamed for the success of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK at last week’s elections, thanks to the reckless pace of his net zero push.

Yet Starmer won’t axe him. Grassroots activists adore Miliband. They see him as a man of principle and would be furious if he were ousted.

They’re not so keen on Rachel Reeves, but she’s politically close to Starmer and he’s keen to keep her in post for the full five-year term. Scary, I know.

The minister he’s rumoured to be moving on isn’t as notorious as Miliband and Reeves but as I’ve written before, she’s every bit as damaging.

Possibly more so, in the long run.

Most people haven’t paid much attention to Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, but they should.

She’s declared war on what may be the only truly successful policy the Tories delivered during their 14 years in power: education reform.

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Back in 2009, 15-year-olds in England ranked 27th in the world for maths, according to PISA rankings. Today, they’re 11th.

In reading, they’ve improved from 25th to 13th. In science, from 16th to 13th.

That didn’t happen by chance. It was the result of rigorous reforms, a focus on discipline and the growth of academy schools.

Phillipson seems determined to undo all of it to appease the hard-left teaching unions.

She’s already weakened Ofsted’s inspection powers, cancelled the next wave of free schools, and made it harder for schools to exclude disruptive pupils.

Incredibly, she’s even allowed teachers to work from home.

As if that wasn’t enough, she’s handed control of curriculum reform to Professor Becky Francis, a self-described expert in “education and social justice” who wants teachers to focus on indoctrinating our kids in “issues and diversities”.

Francis has openly criticised what she calls the “recent obsession with academic achievement”. Weirdly, she seems to view that as a bad thing.

Starmer, it seems, has had enough. According to the Daily Mail, Phillipson is now tipped for demotion after “blindsiding” Number 10 with a schools package that undermined the popular academy system.

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The PM needs to act fast as the teaching unions are getting a grip on our schools, led by the National Education Union’s new general secretary Daniel Kebede.

He’s a hard-left ideologue who’s declared the UK education system “institutionally racist” and wants it run on Marxist lines.

Phillipson has kowtowed to the unions but this has only emboldened Kebede, who’s desperate to get them out on strike.

A Labour spokesman has dismissed the Mail’s report, and No 10 has declined to comment on speculation. But let’s hope it’s true.

If Starmer leaves Phillipson in post, he’ll be complicit in the damage she’s inflicting on standards, our children’s futures and Labour’s electoral prospects.

It would be nice if Starmer found time to get stuck into Ed Miliband while he’s at it. Can’t have everything, I suppose.

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