Exam result shock: Balls fails

You know how it is.  You start reading an article by Ed Balls – in this case, in today’s Guardian – and, before long, you’ve come across so many deceptions, half-truths and tribal slurs that you decide to fisk the whole thing.  So here is Balls’s article, with my supplementary comments in bold:

The first group of young people to have been entirely educated under Labour pick up their GCSE results today. No doubt this will provoke some commentators into even greater efforts to do down their achievements – claiming more young people succeeding must mean exams are getting easier.

In the early years of David Cameron’s leadership, the Tories didn’t join in this annual “dumbing down” chorus. But over the past year, they’ve changed tack with a concerted campaign to criticise the state education system and rubbish the achievements of young people.

This is one of the most disingenuous beginnings to an article you could ever fear to read.