The Never-Ending Blairite One-Party State

But you still won't listen:

'Ed Balls has declared Gove’s plans for academies as ‘a total perversion of Labour’s policy, which was about turning round under-performing schools in disadvantaged areas’. Adonis’s response is rather different. ‘Neither I nor Tony Blair believed that academies should be restricted to areas with failing schools. We wanted all schools to be eligible for academy status, and we were enthusiastic about the idea of entirely new schools being established on the academy model, as in Michael Gove’s Free Schools policy.’

He says that, for Labour, it was a question of sequencing. ‘The most urgent challenge facing English education is the replacement of failing and underperforming comprehensives. We focused academies accordingly, and the coalition would be wise to do so too. Eradicating the tail of failing comprehensives is what will transform English education — and English society.’

Looking back, does he feel that the Academies programme lost momentum when Tony Blair left? ‘I couldn’t possibly comment on that one. The fact is that we have more than 400 academies which are either open or on the way to being opened. That’s a phenomenal achievement for state-funded education. The coalition is taking the academies movement further, it is making it possible for more successful schools to become academies too and I support that.’

Much attention has fallen on ‘free schools’, academies that can be set up by new providers and run independently under the state system. What does Adonis think of them? ‘I support them. I have no problem with free schools at all. As you know I am a strong supporter of diversity in the state system and independently managed schools. Provided the schools are funded fairly and they don’t have unfair admissions practices, then I think having greater diversity of schools is a good thing.’

Cameron wanted Adonis as Education Secretary, but Adonis declined because of the Conservative Party's hostility to grammar schools. There was no suggestion that Adonis would have had to have given up his Labour Party membership, but then at that point most people expected the next Labour Leader to be the wrong Miliband brother, rather than, as has turned out to be the case, the right Miliband brother.

Similarly, Peter Mandelson publicly announced, while still in the Brown Cabinet, that he would be in a Cameron Cabinet, as he would have been if the Coalition had not come to pass instead. And Gove has repeated heaped effusive praise, not only on Blair, but also on those unrepentant old Trots, Alan Milburn and Stephen "Cab For Hire" Byers. Byers had killed himself off by the Election, but as for Milburn, while we may not have much for which to thank Nick Clegg... Oh, and Google "Bernard Gray".

There will be more, mostly with the sectarian Leftist backgrounds that made them Blairites, since that is where Blairites came and come from. If Cameron had an overall majority then there would be a whole lot more.

Are you listening? Are you listening at all? Will you ever listen?