Burnham burns up

Andy Burnham has caught up with Coffee House’s revelation earlier this week that the Treasury, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department of Education are going to have to review their position on academy funding because of a legal challenge.  Burnham is twittering, in typically hyperbolic terms, about the matter. But the reality of the situation is rather less dramatic. The coming changes will simply be a matter of preventing the taxpayer paying twice over for a service, once from the academy to the local authority (the new system) and once from the Department of Education to the local authority (the old system).

Education is fast turning into one of the coalition’s greatest success stories, which is why the Lib Dems are so hungrily eyeing up the chance of getting the job of minister for schools in the next reshuffle. But Burnham has placed Labour on the wrong side of the issue. This is a remarkable strategic failure when you consider that most of the coalition’s policies are inspired by the education White Paper of the Blair government.