There are few worse insults for a minister than to be called ‘house trained’. It implies that the vested interests of your department have you under their thumb.
So, Vince Cable and David Willetts should be rather alarmed that one notoriously left-wing academic is boasting that they pretty much are. In an article in Times Higher Education, Martin McQuillan of Kingston University describes the pair as ‘mostly house-trained.’ One person involved in the whole spending review conundrum irritably pointed me towards the McQuillan piece when asked how things were going with BIS.
McQuillan’s essay is really a long screed against Michael Gove. His agenda is to stop universities being put back under the control of the Department of Education. His fear is that the education secretary Michael Gove is too radical to be — even — half house-trained.
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