Which side are you on? | 26 October 2010

At last, The Guardian is reporting the grassroots rebellion in education. It has picked up on the story of Fiona Murphy who blogged on Coffee House yesterday about her trouble with the Tory-run council in Bromley. But hang on… the “grassroots revolt” of which the Guardian speaks is the councils, trying to protect their monopoly control over state schools. Here is the extract:

“A flagship government policy has provoked a grassroots revolt against the coalition, with senior Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors lining up to attack the introduction of free schools, one of education secretary Michael Gove’s most cherished projects…Coalition councillors are fighting the education secretary’s plans, claiming that they threaten to wreck social harmony by creating ethnic or religious enclaves and will disrupt efforts to improve the lives of all children.”

Only The Guardian could see the protests of local authority bureaucrats as being a “grassroots rebellion”. It is like a parody of some statist newspaper, that only recognises various levels of government.