The quango state: how the left still runs Britain

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[/audioplayer]Last week Sally Morgan reverted to type. After almost three years as a model of cross-party co-operation, instinctive Labour tribalism finally won out as she accused Downing Street of purging Labour supporters from high offices. Of the many Labour types appointed by the coalition into quangos, she was probably the last person the government expected to go hostile. Not only had she done a fine job chairing Ofsted, the schools inspector, but she was a proven reformer who certainly shares Michael Gove’s passion for new schools. Like many Blairites, she is something of a Goveite at heart. But now, with just over a year to go until the election, personal loyalties are giving way to raw expediency.

That goes not just for the Labour cuckoos in the governmental nest, but for the Liberal Democrat coalition partners too. Until now they have been like the 1950s Egyptian general who swore to remain loyal to President Nasser ‘until the day for treachery arrives’. With their opportunistic exploitation of the Baroness Morgan moment, Nick Clegg and David Laws have signalled that the day has now dawned. Their polling tells them that Michael Gove is the pantomime villain of the particular demographic whose votes they covet, so they will accuse the education secretary of wanting to draft in Tory ideological stooges whether they have good grounds to do so, or not.

And on what evidence? Lisa Jardine, an historian, says that decision not to reappoint her (at age 69) to run the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority was obviously due to her Labour membership. Sally Morgan says the same. In fact, the figures indicate that this government has been biased — still inserting Labour placemen in every nook and cranny of public life.