On the eve of the election, the future of our proposed school hangs in the balance

As the leader of a group of parents trying to set up Britain’s first free school, I’ve been spending the past week or so frantically mugging up on the Liberal Democrats’ education policy. In the event of a hung parliament, would the Lib Dems support the Conservatives’ educational reforms? On the face of it, the answer’s no. One of the ways in which the Tories are proposing to make life easier for groups like mine is to take away the veto that local authorities have over the creation of new academies. My local council is Conservative-controlled and will probably remain so after 6 May, but as we saw from the remarks of Paul Carter, the leader of Kent County Council, not all Tory councillors see eye-to-eye with the national party on this. There are also the local officials to deal with. All in all, my task will be much simpler if I can bypass my local authority.