By moving Adonis from his job at education, Brown has ensured the death of Blair's best policy idea 

Fred

He is just a blairite. These people don't have principles, you were mistaken.

Eddy

That was one of the surprises for me. Tis a pity, but hopefully this leaves an opening for the Conservatives to present their own radical programme at a suitable time.

Jon

Agree - it's very say that Adonis has been given the chop

mac

When you say 'unions', I assume this means principally the NUT soviet. And it's not just the unions- note the shrill Ms' Melissa Benn and Fiona Miller (Alistair Campbell's partner, funny old thing, eh?) in regurgitated Guardian articles, for example, in favour of comprehensive uniformity.

Chuck Unsworth

"Why on earth did Andrew Adonis accept his new job in the Department of Transport?"

Because he is no better than the rest of them. Desperate to cling to power, privilege and influence. In love with all three.

Men and women of principle? I think not. These are apparatchiks, willing to do anything to retain their positions.

Alex R

You say the unions, but what about Ed Balls? He has never been a fan of the academies programme (instead believing in centralisation and decree) and the recent "love in" between the Tories and Adonis does not suit this fractional/dividing lines view of politics.

Perhaps this can also be seen as another example of Brown's "scorched earth" policy as it prevents continuity had Adonis been persuaded to continue as schools minister under a Conservative government.

This just demonstrates that Brown is talking nonsense when he speaks about national interest before party.

luke

The word inside Government is that adonis has been agitating for a new challenge and this was the job he wanted. Brown tried to persuade him to stay or move to DH, but he was set on taking forward policies on high speed rail

John Page

And will Ed Miliband pursue the Hutton line on energy, or are we back to windmills and power cuts?

The Laughing Cavalier

This is hardly a surprise. The treacherous Brown did everything he could for ten years to undermine this and other reforms, the NHS especially, proposed by his Prime Minister. All for the sake of personal ambition.

Roger Davies

There will be no improvements in the education of our children until such time that the dead hand of politics is removed. The only way forward is a complete privatisation of all schools and the establishment of Education Vouchers.

Fraser Nelson

Luke, I have real difficulty with that analysis. Adonis is not a career politciian, looking to hope from one area to the next. He's a former adviser, ennobled simply so he could push through City Academies and be a one-man guardian of Blair's legacy. He was sent to boarding school by the council, had a world class education, and as always struck me as a principled politician (they do exist, Fred!) devoted to helping other disadvantaged children have the same kind of help. He's a case study in how one man in politics can make a difference, if he gives 180%. The idea of Adonis saying "this schools stuff is a chore, I'm off to play with some trains" is utterly incongruous. As is the idea of Brown pleading with him to stay.

The Laughing Cavalier

If what Mr Nelson says is correct Lord Adonis should have refused to be moved, accepting the sack as the price of principle. It would seem that the lure of the minsterial limo, the pay and the perks prved irresistable.

David Lindsay

He has been offered, and has clearly accepted, the position of Education Secretary under Cameron. Merely being moved is very light punishment indeed.

King Prawn

Fraser, would you say the Academies Programme is dead or will come back under the Tories.

Let's be honest, the Academies was the first reform that Blair had in reforming schools. It was pretty obvious that once he had managed to loosen the grip of the malevalent interests of the teaching unions and the LEAs over education he would have gone for school vouchers.

The trouble with Brown and his cohort, Balls, is that rather than improving our schools they want to have a clear dividing line between the Labour and Tory policy.

This agains demonstrates that Brown cares more for political calculation not the well being of this country.

Fraser Nelson

King Prawn, the Tory focus is on their Swedish school programme but I think they should keep going in parallel with City Academies. The problem is opposition from system - the the councils, LEAs and some aspects of the Department. So you need someone who knows the system, as Adonis does, to fight it. Much as I consider Gove's plan superior to City Academies he'd be daft not to press ahead with both. The children now consigned to sink schools just can't wait.

Now "dead" is on reflection an overstatement. Adonis gave the programme such a push it will keep going for some time, he has plenty Academies in the pipeline. But without him pushing teh CA programme will lose momentum fairly quickly, especially considering the forces aligned against it.

hadrian

Brown is underneath all that heavy disguise of ponderous respectability an out and out, unreconstructed statist eglaitarian at heart. Merit and its reward is anathema just as the mere idea of punishment - corporal and capital- are too. Hence longterm his absurd vision can only lead to utopia- ie, go nowhere any of us'd want to go in our right minds. Our state schools are paralysed with egalitarian ineptitude and resultant indiscipline. When pupils are drilled in the underlying philosophy of cynical nihilism and brutishness no wonder our society is falling apart at its spoiled, pampered, greedy, materialistic, hedonistic seams.

TGF UKIP

"Loosening the fist of government from schools was a task that defeated Thatcher and Blair"

Not at all how I remember it in Mrs T's case, Fraser. In fact it was Mrs T who first implemented the National Curriculum to seek to impose some sort of educational rigour in the face of the trendy left rubbish being perpetuated not just by LEA's but more particularly by younger (and now very senior) teachers being produced by the teacher training establishment from the sixties onwards.

I cannot help thinking that the huge mistake that Blair and Adonis, Cameron, Gove and Fraser Nelson are making is believing it is all about structure and process, which is why you gush endlessly on about the Tories' Swedish model.

I agree that may be of some assistance, but across millions of pupils and hundreds of thousands of teachers, education is fundamentally about what is taught to pupils by teachers and how it is taught.

Which is why I believe the structure etc is irrelevant. Until you rectify how teachers are trained to teach and what their priorities as teachers must be, all else is so much froth and getting a grip of the teacher training establishments and loosening the hold of the trendy pc left there is going to take decades to achieve.

I must admit when I write like this I do have reference to a much loved 25 year old niece who is extremely intelligent, articulate, literate and worldly wise and a teacher who amazingly spouts the most astonishing drivel when it comes to the very basic matter of imparting knowledge.

If the teacher training establishment can brainwash D to such an extent within so short a time, it really is going to take many decades and much blood, sweat and tears to put right.

And certainly not just a few Cameronian swedish gimmicks.

seb

TGF UKIP –

"education is fundamentally about what is taught to pupils by teachers and how it is taught..."

Hoorah! There is in fact at least one other human being in this universe, with the possible exception of Melanie Phillips, who understands that the lamentable creation of our tenth-rate education has nothing to do with structure and process. The story of your otherwise clever niece who, as you put it, spouts the most astonishing drivel when it comes to the very basic matter of imparting knowledge, perfectly sums up the nature of the tragedy.

Complicit in the establishment's complete ignorance of the fundamental catastrophe of UK state education - the preposterous nature of what occurs inside lessons - is of course our educationalists’ belief system. The egalitarian ineptitude referred to in Hadrian’s comment is the inevitable product of what the educational establishment believes our schools ought to be: a system of make-believe equality of outcome.

Even the proposal to give parents a choice of educational styles for their children is flawed. Few parents are likely to have the initiative to establish schools that deliver real rather than Mickey Mouse lessons. Opposition from the establishment to the availability of such choice will be unbelievably vicious, frenzied and unethical. And since when does any government have the moral right to offer its citizens merely the choice between quality and tat? Our children have, for decades, been attending schools which for the most part are a waste of bricks and roof tiles. Tenth-rate education needs to come off the menu altogether, something that the likes of Lord Adonis and most politicians either choose to ignore or utterly fail to comprehend.