Without Michael Gove the Tories have no moral mission on education

Why is Nicky Morgan the Education Secretary? She’s long been billed as a rising star in the government and has put in some very passionate and impressive performances on the conference fringe this year. But her speech to the Conservative conference hall this afternoon didn’t really answer that question. It was workmanlike, and its main mission seemed to be to tick boxes such as ‘must be nice to teachers’, rather than give us any sense of Morgan’s personal mission.

Of course there was a difficult contrast between the minister apparently given the departmental responsibility because she’s not Michael Gove and Michael Gove himself, who appeared emotional as delegates applauded him at length in the hall. The education section this afternoon was devoid of the same sense of moral mission that the same session last year had displayed. Then, a mother whose child attended a free school broke town in tears on stage, and a former US teaching union boss ‘repented’ of his opposition to education reform.