'Theresa May was clear I did a good job' says sacked Justine Greening in first newspaper interview

JUSTINE Greening has vowed to stay true to her beliefs '“ and become a champion for young people '“ after losing her dream job in the Cabinet reshuffle.
Justine Greening, giving her first newspaper interview since being sacked, to The Yorkshire Post todayJustine Greening, giving her first newspaper interview since being sacked, to The Yorkshire Post today
Justine Greening, giving her first newspaper interview since being sacked, to The Yorkshire Post today

“I have two mottos on life. Keep on trucking. Keep going whatever happens,” the former Education Secretary tells The Yorkshire Post.

“The second is a brilliant African proverb that I came across when I was International Development Secretary. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. If we want to go far, and perhaps become the first country in the world to have equality of opportunity, then we’ve got to go together.”

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The Rotherham-born politician is at Sheffield’s Winter Gardens giving her first newspaper interview since being sacked as Education Secretary by Theresa May three weeks ago.

She should have been preparing for the first education questions of 2018 in Parliament. Instead the quietly spoken 48-year-old is contemplating how best to advance her social mobility reforms as an ex-Minister.

Tellingly, there’s no bitterness over her Cabinet exit three months after she had the privilege of returning to her former comprehensive school, Oakwood High, in Rotherham – she turned down the Work and Pensions brief because the complexity of the Universal Credit roll-out would have been all consuming.

Yet, no longer weighed down by the responsibilities of office, she hopes to build bridges across the political spectrum to ensure that skills are, Brexit permitting, at the heart of the domestic policy agenda.

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“A few people have said I’m on a sabbatical. I’m not sure if that’s true. If I wanted to stay in the Government, I could have done,” she discloses.

“I’ve got a chance to put all my energies into social mobility, but from outside government and that’s needed, and to catch up on a bit of sleep.

“I’m really looking forward to the next stage of my time in politics, but it will be different and I hope I can make a big difference for young people.

“The Prime Minister was clear with me that she felt I had done a good job as Secretary of State for education.

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"What was I going to regret more at the end of this Parliament? Not doing a fourth Cabinet Ministerial job (her first job was Transport Secretary) or was it stepping back from the issues that I care about the most? It was the latter.”

Ms Greening says she has no regrets and used her 18 months “very, very fully”, in particular pioneering reforms to technical education. She would like to be remembered as the Education Secretary who “pulled together the very first comprehensive action plan to shift the dial on social mobility”.

She’s chosen to speak to this newspaper because she believes politics is too London-centric; her outlook continues to be shaped by her upbringing in South Yorkshire and how she had to leave her home town to fulfil her ambitions.

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She was just 10 and was walking home from visiting her grandparents on the “other side of Rotherham” when this reality dawned on her. “Why should people have to move to get the chances in life?” asks Ms Greening, after accepting that the Government does need to invest more in Yorkshire and the North.

“The country was built on the back of these thriving cities in the North and steadily, over time, we became an economy that became London-centric. In the end, that’s not good for anyone.

Ask any Londoner about house prices. Everyone has a challenge with an economy too focused on one area.

“I want to make sure social mobility is something MPs across Parliament are focused on as a priority. When all of us are looking at new laws, we need to ask ourselves a very simple question: is this going to make our country one that has equality of opportunity for all or not? There’s a sense of urgency. There’s no time to lose.”