The Spectator

Have David Cameron’s Etonians just given up on state school reform?

Demoting Michael Gove meant putting party before pupils.

[Getty Images/Shutterstock/iStock] 
issue 19 July 2014

During his time as Education Secretary, Michael Gove would often have occasion to quote a passage of Machiavelli: ‘There is nothing more difficult, more doubtful of success or more dangerous than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.

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