To set up our free school, we’re preparing to go into battle with the hard left

As you may have read, the West London Free School has been included among the ‘first wave’ of schools that have been given the go-ahead by the government to open next year. That’s an important milestone, but we haven’t yet arrived at our destination. In order to reach the Promised Land we’ll have to do battle with the praetorian guard of the educational establishment.

As anyone who read The Spectator’s cover story two weeks ago will know, the hard left is prepared to use any means necessary to defeat Michael Gove’s educational reforms. Take Nick Grant, the most energetic opponent of the West London Free School. As secretary of the Ealing branch of the NUT, Nick has taken it upon himself to contact the borough’s head teachers and warn them against supporting our proposal. Free Schools, he tells them, are profoundly undemocratic — which is a little ironic given that he’s a member of the Socialist Workers Party. Apparently, it’s more ‘democratic’ to allow education policy to be dictated by a revolutionary communist than the elected government of the United Kingdom.

Last week I invited this committed democrat to debate me at a public meeting on Ealing’s South Acton estate. This would have been in front of an audience of local parents, precisely the people Grant claims to be speaking for. But in the end he cried off. For a champion of local accountability he seems remarkably reluctant to be held to account.

In fact, Nick Grant is the least of my concerns. He’s just a foot soldier in the anti-free schools army. It’s the generals I need to worry about. Here I would count Fiona Millar, Alastair Campbell’s partner and a veteran campaigner against any attempt to reform the state education sector.