Michael Gove and his colleagues have enjoyed poking Labour on education policy recently. His catty letter exchange with Stephen Twigg last week left Twigg with the victory for style with a supremely bitchy reply, while Gove won on substance (largely because he asked whether Labour’s education frontbench possessed any). Today he tried to assemble his own fantasy Labour education team as he took questions from MPs in the House of Commons chamber.
Kate Hoey gave him a forthright prod about the delay in a school converting to an academy in her constituency. Gove didn’t really answer her question, instead saying:
‘I’m very grateful to the honourable lady. She’s a brilliant campaigner for higher-quality schools in her own constituency, we’ll do everything we can to help and I’m afraid the question lays bare the fact that there are some really good MPs on the Labour benches who want their schools to be academies, but an insufficient number of Labour local authorities that are prepared to stand with us against the enemies of promise.’
He referred to those ‘enemies of promise’ again in the question time, identifying them as trade unions opposing academies.
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