The general election stands thoroughly to break the link between public services and any sense of democratic accountability for what happens to them. A public less open to message manipulation would and should reject this. However, such a choice seems unlikely.

At the macro level, there are two aspects through which that link between democratic accountability and public services stands to be broken on 8 June 8:

First, the public is being explicitly asked to disregard the record of what has happened to public services under the leadership of the Conservatives since 2010.

The best evidence for this I’ve heard is an interview that the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, gave to the Today programme last week.

He said: “Everything, when it comes to public services… is eclipsed by the need to get a good outcome to the Brexit negotiations.

“If you want to… get more money for public services, you have to vote for [Theresa May] and give her that strong hand” in those negotiations.

Mr Hunt had been asked about the NHS’ problems. Although he did respond on some of the specific points about staff pressure and waiting lists growing, the overarching response by Mr Hunt, which he repeated, seemed to me to be the argument of a political scoundrel, trying to evade responsibility for the detail of his record.

If you accept it, the implication is that the electorate should not vote on what has happened in the past seven years in public services - ie, it should not hold the government to account for its record - since the alternative, a bad Brexit deal as negotiated by Jeremy Corbyn, would be worse. Yet we face Brexit, despite, of course, the nation being told at the time of the Brexit vote that £350 million a week would be redirected to the NHS whatever happened.

As a voting prospectus for someone who follows the intricacies of public service reform closely, it does not get much more depressing than this.

Second, if the British public delivers what seems likely at the moment, and what Hunt and his fellow ministers seem to argue will help public services through the Brexit negotiations, then an overwhelming Conservative majority will follow.

Will that be good for democratic influence over public services such as education? Surely not. Here, it would be best to put aside any question of Tory versus Labour control and simply consider whether a small or a large Conservative margin would be good. Having the latter would sever a useful check and balance, risking breaking any responsiveness of schools policymaking to public opinion for the next five years.

Ministers must be held to account

The last two years, during which the Conservatives have had only a narrow majority, have seen some policy U-turns which have at least moderated bad reforms.

The best example is last year’s abandonment of plans to force all schools into academy status, where a bad policy being imposed for the wrong reasons was watered down as Conservative MPs found themselves facing constituents unhappy that their child’s successful primary school could be compelled into distracting, expensive and risky organisational change.

That narrow majority has constrained the government in other ways. The opposition of some Conservatives has limited the government’s room for manoeuvre on its grammar school reforms.

Remove the narrow majority, on the basis of an election which we have now been told must not be fought on anything to do with the detail of public service reform, and that constraint will be gone. The link between policy and any kind of democratic feedback on its detail will go.

The combination of the first and second points is vital. Ministers lay claim to what are very large powers of influence over what goes on in schools on the basis that this is a democracy, and we can always vote them out.

If, actually, we are then told not to vote on the record of public service reform, that link is broken. And the notion of any meaningful democratic influence on policy falls.

To watch Theresa May interviewed on Sunday’s The Andrew Marr Show, during which she was asked about severe school cuts but dodged the question by referencing only the new national funding formula, which has no answer to cuts overall, is to have this feeling reinforced.

Citizens being told not to vote on politicians’ records is a shameful argument. It feels like an act of political blackmail, no doubt sticking even more in the throats of those who did not vote Brexit last year and are now told that, whatever their views on public services, they must disregard them in the “national interest”.

Contrary to Hunt’s case, an overwhelming Conservative majority seems unlikely to serve education well. The electorate should reject the chance to hand May the blank cheque over domestic policy for which she seems to be asking.

Another example of ministers evading responsibility was implicit in Monday’s Commons Education Select Committee report on assessment. The committee criticised the government’s Standards and Testing Agency for bungling the introduction of new tests last year.

In 2009, Conservative leader David Cameron pledged to reform quangos by taking policy implementation more directly under ministerial oversight. He did this from 2010 through setting up organisations coming more closely under government control such as the STA. Ministers could then be sacked for operational failures, he promised.

And which minister has taken responsibility in this way for the STA’s failings? “Mr Nobody,” as my children might say.

Warwick Mansell is a freelance education journalist and author of Education by Numbers. You can read his back catalogue here. He tweets @warwickmansell

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