Below The Necessary Level

What a grandstanding fraud is Michael Gove. He knows perfectly well that there is no Commons majority for bringing back proper A-levels with AS as a qualification in its own right, just as he knew that there was no Commons majority for bringing back O-levels. That never happened. Until the advent of the first Labour Government since 1979, nor will this.

In the case of examination boards, the application of “free” market principles to the provision of a public service has proved an unmitigated disaster, including for the business community more widely, raising the question of whether that might also be true elsewhere. Commercial schools, which are tax-exempt as charities rather than being taxed as the businesses that they are, hardly ever use anything like the export strength IGCSE favoured in Saint Helena and other old outposts, but instead content themselves with fleecing the gullible by merely being adept at getting people through exams that are largely rubbish anyway.

The present structure of A-levels is an inevitable consequence of the replacement of O-levels with GCSEs. Even assuming that there is any remaining need for a qualification at 16 when the school-leaving age is in any case to be raised in the near future, bringing back both O-levels and proper A-levels would therefore involve denouncing Margaret Thatcher. Replacing O-levels with GCSEs was her very worst domestic policy, and that is saying quite, quite something. Untold numbers of us will be filling in the gaps as best we can for the rest of our lives.

Let Labour alone promise to legislate, both for the restoration of A-levels and AS-levels (do S-levels still exist, by the way?), and for the restoration of the O-levels that it voted to save in the first place. Let Labour alone promise that ultimate legislative reversal of Thatcherism. No one else could, even if they wanted to, which they do not.

For Labour to do so would entail the removal of the Blairite living dead Stephen Twigg. But since, true to that tendency, he has ruled out restoring the Educational Maintenance Allowance, good riddance. Give the job to Rory Weal. Or, in a Government Of All The Talents, to Lord Lindsay of Lanchester. Why, in that latter case, I might almost re-join the party. Almost.

Ed Miliband and Jon Cruddas, over to you.