There’s an old saying in politics: never let a good crisis go to waste. That is certainly the approach adopted by the National Education Union (NEU), Britain’s biggest representative body for teachers. With breath-taking cynicism and self-serving ruthlessness, the union is using the Covid-19 pandemic to hammer the Government over cheap political points — at terrible cost to the nation’s children. Its mission not only ignores entirely the educational needs of pupils, it also casts aside the rights of taxpayers who underwrite our state schools. As the Mail has highlighted, many teachers have shown themselves to be nothing short of heroic during the pandemic, going the extra mile to ensure that the needs of children are not forgotten.