Delusions of grandeur

Here is what Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, told a Fabian Society and Progress debate for the Labour deputy leadership contenders on 16 May: ‘For our party audience, if you said, yes, we will ban those grammar schools where they exist at the moment, it would get a round of applause. The reason why the [Labour] National Policy Forum who discussed this at length have not gone to that step is quite simple: we would lose Gloucester, we would lose Slough. The people who are telling us that are MPs in those areas who fiercely oppose selective education, so this is the real cardinal point, if we want to carry out our policies, we have to be in power, and we have to be aware in deciding our policies what that will do for our chances of being elected to government. Realpolitik.’

So much for the Tory mantra of the past week and a half that grammar schools are not popular.