Don’t mention education reform

A new rule seems to have been adopted at Lib Dem conference: don’t mention Academies. The coalition’s greatest single success story – something David Laws and Michael Gove agreed on before the election – is being airbrushed out. A favourable reference to Academies taking on kids from deprived backgrounds was proposed for a conference motion, but has been excised by the delegates. Lib Dem activists are heavily drawn from the ranks of local authority councilors, many of whom hate the way that schools have been given the power to break free from council control. Confronting them was a key part of Nick Clegg’s modernization programme. It seems that this has been aborted.

When I watched Sarah Teather last year, take on her party activists over the need to liberate schools from local authorities, I put her down as a politician of substance. This year: not so much. Set aside her car crash stand-up comedy routine (Sky News has the gory