Since I last blogged, quite an important fact has been brought to my attention. Two facts, in actuality, and they both concern the new leader of the opposition. The first is that David Cameron has a son with cerebral palsy (cp). This alone does not worry me in the slightest: I initially thought this would mean Cameron was more in touch with the needs of people with disabilities, which is a good thing, especially for a Tory.

I was wrong, for the second fact I learned about Cameron is he is against inclusive education. This struck alarm bells in my head – given that this guy could well be prime minister in four years’ time, it would spell disaster for the inclusive education scheme. It might put us back to the days of segregation, and a second rate education for disabled kids.

You can’t blame him, of course. You can’t blame any parent in such a position, who wants to send their disabled child to a special school. Any child is precious to a parent, so there is, quite naturally, a tendency to want to wrap disabled kids in cotton wool and send us off to the warm, sheltered environs of special schools. My concern is, however, that this would be almost disastrous for the child in the long term: when he or she reaches eighteen or nineteen, he or she will be so poorly equipped for the real world, so used to the homely atmosphere of school life, that he or she will be quite unprepared for the often chaotic maelstrom that is modernity. If they are lucky, students will have four or five low grade GCSEs to their name. not many get a-levels, and I have not heard of any student going straight from a special school to university. Furthermore, nondisabled kids would benefit in that increased interaction with disabled kids will break down prejudices and misconceptions. You would be surprised how many people around uni still have no idea how to act around me.

Yet to a parent of a disabled child, inclusion represents a threat. Of course, there are exceptions – and I can point you to at least two who post on my comments – but many parents do not seem to think their child could cope in mainstream school. Thus, when they finally escape the linoleum carpet and the signs in Makaton, their kids hit the real world with a bump. This means, in my experience, that many are unable to enter higher education and get jobs. If, on the other hand, they are educated alongside their able-bodied peers, both socially and educationally they would be on a par with everyone else (providing, of course, they get the right support in mainstream).

Cameron therefore represents a threat in my eyes. He wants what is best for his son, and others like him. However, we have very different opinions on what is best for disabled kids. Having a parent with a disabled kid as opposition leader or PM might be beneficial, but if he acts on his views, it might also be catastrophic. As Justin R said, politics just got interesting again,