Tristram Hunt’s speech to the Labour conference was short and sweet. It was laden with sweeteners for party delegates, which is as things should be at these events, but perhaps his Blairite predecessors are feeling a little sour after the Shadow Education Secretary spent a fair bit of his time on the stage denouncing the principles they once espoused.
Clearly the aim was to keep the party faithful happy – and they’d spent the session beforehand making quite clear that they wanted a screeching reversal over many of the Coalition’s education reform – because Hunt also attempted to galvanise them by talking about Michael Gove. And when he got bored of talking about Gove, he talked about Nicky Morgan, who he described as ‘a “Continuity Gove”, auto-pilot Education Secretary’.
He emphasised that the core of Labour’s education reform was collaboration, not the Conservative principle of competition, saying:
‘But schools, like teachers, work best as a team. We learnt that with Labour’s London Challenge – transforming results for London’s schools. The Tories think education should be a competitive fight. We believe in partnership and collaboration.
‘As Secretary of State for Education, I will roll out the London Challenge scheme across the country: tackling poor results and raising standards in our coastal towns, counties, and regional cities. Schools succeed – like England and Scotland – Better Together.’
The London Challenge line wasn’t a new announcement. And neither was anything else in the speech, which is odd given this is the last Labour conference before the General Election, and should therefore be the most policy-rich meeting. There will be no more announcements from Hunt this week either.
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