Tristram Hunt is planning his own Trojan horse

Tristram Hunt hasn’t lost much time using the Birmingham Islamist schools scandal to call for an end to the autonomy of free schools and Academies. It’s a bizarre non-sequitur. The ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal happened in schools run by the appalling Birmingham City Council (whose defects I’ve already written about). Yet Labour is using this scandal as its own Trojan horse – to take power out of the hands of parents, and give it back to the local bureaucrats whom the party (sadly) now represents:

‘Cameron’s schools policy has delivered a vacuum in the local oversight of our schools, leaving children exposed to falling standards and vulnerable to risks posed by extremists…. Labour has pledged to introduce new local Directors of School Standards to root-out problems before they set in’

The real job of these new bureaucrats would be to end school freedom. If Hunt sounds a little desperate, it’s with good reason – the apology drawn from Michael Gove and the sacking of Theresa May’s special adviser has not really exposed a scandal.