As an iconoclastic journalist, I’m used to being attacked.
As an iconoclastic journalist, I’m used to being attacked. It comes with the territory and after 25 years I’ve developed quite a thick skin. But ever since I started leading the efforts of a group of parents and teachers to set up a free school in west London, the level of vitriol directed against me has increased a thousandfold. In a bizarre twist of fate, I’ve only become a truly reviled figure since I decided to do something good.
Scarcely a day passes without someone on the left launching a vicious personal attack. I naively thought that my opponents might respect the Sabbath, but last Sunday I had to contend with the latest broadside from Fiona Millar, a former aide to Cherie Blair.
She spent the best part of Sunday morning composing a jeremiad on the Local Schools Network — a website that exists for the sole purpose of campaigning against education reform — that accused the West London Free School of trying to get a group of special needs children evicted from their purpose-built school in Hammersmith so we could move in.
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