Gove must guard against the vested interests

Polly Toynbee was on ‘mute’ on Sky News in my office, the remote wasn’t working, which is frustrating because I’d love to hear how someone mounts a passionate defence of why local government should have monopoly control of state schools. Very few things in politics are indefensible, but a system which doles out sink schools to sink estates is one of them. When Michael Gove was a journalist, he described comprehensive education as the greatest betrayal of the working class. And now, as Education Secretary, he is outlining a system that will give the poor the same choice of schools that the rich have. Who on earth could be against that?
 
Polly, I suspect, would have been able to make a better argument than the teachers’ unions who have today been informing us that parents don’t want these schools. Really? If that’s true, then no new schools will open.