It is 7.30 a.m. and I am the first to arrive at Harris City Technology College in south London, where Andrew Adonis, the schools minister, wants to meet for breakfast. The building is shut, the weather is freezing and a kindly cleaner asks me inside to wait. ‘Are you here for an interview?’ she asks. I nod, and she offers me a cup of tea. ‘What position are you applying for?’ I almost spit out the tea and explain I’m interviewing Lord Adonis. ‘Ah,’ she says. ‘Him again.’
Most schools would go into overdrive before a ministerial visit, but this particular establishment is used to seeing the lanky figure of Lord Adonis showing guests around. When we meet, he admits his strategy. ‘When a Labour MP starts on me about City Academies I say, “Look, I don’t want to have this argument. Why don’t you go see one of the schools for yourself?” I send them here,’ he says, looking around.
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