She could be a contender

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[/audioplayer]Nicky Morgan has been Education Secretary for 15 months now. Yet her office looks like she has just moved in. She has some family photos on the desk, a small collection of drinks bottles by the window and a rugby ball in her in-tray. But, unlike other cabinet ministers, she has made no attempt to make her office look like her study. This is not someone who sees their office as a home away from home.

When Morgan was made Michael Gove’s successor last year, it seemed an unusual appointment. She’d only been an MP for four years. She had a marginal seat — Loughborough — and the general election was fast approaching. How could she follow on from an operator as forceful as Gove? Morgan admits that when she took the job, ‘The focus was very much on preparing for the election.’ The general view then was that she had been sent to the department to calm things down after the intense pace of reform under Gove. Unkind souls said she had no particular interest in education beyond having a child at primary school. Even she concedes, ‘I had a lot to learn in terms of the education system.’

Today, however, Morgan is not just recognised as a talented minister; she’s tipped as a successor to David Cameron. She has developed her own style of politics. She may not talk about the ‘blob’ — Gove’s term for his opponents in the educational establishment — but she’s not afraid to tell the National Union of Teachers what she thinks. ‘What frustrates me particularly about the teaching unions is the fact that they seem so willing to point out all the problems as they see them, to talk down the profession when, actually, we have tens of thousands of amazing teachers in this country,’ she says.