Michael gove

David Cameron has today been refreshingly honest about his plans for school funding in England: budgets will be flat, which (when you factor in inflation) will mean a drop of 7 per cent over the next parliament. Cue much mockery from Labour. But what will this mean for the future of education quality? Not very much, if the experience of the Labour years is anything to go by. Under Blair and Brown, school spending more than doubled while England hurtled down the world education performance tables. So if doubling the budget didn’t help, then why should freezing it hurt? The strange thing about education is that it’s not so responsive to cash. A brilliant teacher

The Tories are embarking on an ‘education week’, which means they won’t just be fighting Labour but also the Lib Dems, as the latter like to strike up a fight whenever something involving Michael Gove crops up. Indeed, some Tories suspect the Lib Dems in the Education department as being the source of today’s Independent on Sunday splash about Michael Gove continuing to meddle with education policy – though others point out that he’d probably receive most of them anyway through ministerial ‘write-rounds’ (more on this here). Today to launch the education week Nicky Morgan appeared on Marr, where she said she was ‘absolutely fighting for the schools’ budget to

After Michael Gove’s mobile phone went off in a Cabinet meeting, everyone’s been trying to find out what the ‘jazzy’ ringtone is. As Mr S documented, even Charles Moore was thwarted in his attempts to catch the Chief Whip out by ringing his phone when they were both at dinner. Now his wife has revealed the woman behind the ‘female ballad’ ringtone in her Daily Mail column. ‘Last week, during quite an important work meeting, an urgent email popped up in his inbox,’ Sarah Vine writes. ‘Not wishing to seem rude by looking at his phone, he instead turned to his latest gadget, a Pebble Smartwatch, which I bought him for Christmas.’ The watch is

Ever since Michael Gove was scolded at Cabinet for bringing his noisy mobile phone into the room, everyone’s been trying to find out what the ringtone is. Cabinet sources various described it to The Times as a ‘female ballad’ and a ‘Jazz FM-style comedown music after a heavy night out’. But the Chief Whip is refusing to reveal what the tune is.Last night Gove spoke at a Westminster dinner, and started his speech by announcing he was putting his mobile phone on silent. He then said that the ringtone would remain secret until someone worked out how to use the Freedom of Information Act to secure its identity. But then

Michael Gove pitched up on Newsnight yesterday to give one of his typically confident performances to the programme. Apparently CCHQ don’t believe any floating voters watch the BBC’s flagging current affairs show. The Chief Whip was removed from his previous role as Education Secretary because of poor poll ratings with floating voters, and senior Tories involved in that move were keen that he only be unleashed in controlled circumstances, despite being dubbed one of the new ‘ministers for broadcast’. So Gove wasn’t there to persuade wavering mothers in Bolton, but he was trying to persuade those who were watching that the Tories remain confident they can win a majority in May. He even

Faintly stunned Liberal Democrats report that Michael Gove is an absentee chief whip. He is simultaneously there at the coalition whips’ meetings but not there: a ghostly presence; a bored, miserable figure who has not forgiven or forgotten David Cameron’s decision to demote him from his beloved Education Department. It’s dangerous to humiliate a man and then give him the power to humiliate you. Even in the fag end of a fixed-term parliament, which long ago ran out of useful business to conduct, a government needs a good whips office if it is to stay out of trouble. The Cameron government does not have one and is always tripping over

Tony Blair has taken some time out from posing awkwardly with his wife in order to pen a piece for the New York Times. While he tries to avoid getting drawn on talking about UK domestic politics explicitly, his feeling are poorly hidden: ‘…there have grown up powerful interest groups that can stand in the way of substantial and necessary reform. Anyone who has ever tried to reform an education system, for example, knows how tough and bitter a struggle it is. The bureaucracy fights change. The teachers’ unions fight change. The public gets whipped up to defeat change even when it is in the public’s own interest. The nearest

The government has just won the vote extending the debate on the justice and home affairs opt-outs by just nine votes – 251 ayes to 242 noes. This means that MPs have approved the motion for the debate to continue to 10pm, which rebels and Labour had turned against because the Speaker had said that this was not a vote on the European Arrest Warrant. Theresa May is insistent, though, that this is a vote on the matter. Such a narrow win is clearly a relief for ministers  – and many of them had been hauled into the Commons early by panicked whips who suddenly realised they were facing a

Alex Salmond is on his way out. The First Minister gives every impression of enjoying – or at least making the most of – his farewell tour. And why not? Far from weakening the SNP, defeat in September’s referendum has – at least for now – strengthened the party. Its supremacy is unchallenged and while recent polls putting the Nationalists on 50 percent of the vote are unlikely – surely! – to last forever this is the kind of problem worth having. Nevertheless, the First Minister’s final days in office have also reminded us that policy and, indeed, philosophy are not necessarily Salmond’s strengths. Unusually, First Minister’s Questions proved a

David Laws is an honourable, clear-thinking politician – but looming general elections (and, in the Liberal Democrats’ case, threatened extinction) can have strange effects on a man. Hence his comments about the school curriculum today. He starts off with what sounds like a liberal complaint: politicians ought not to interfere with education. The school curriculum should not be set by the “whims of here-today, gone-tomorrow politicians,” he said. “”Ministers float in and out of the department, often for quite short periods of time” which created “too much turbulence”, he said. Amen. Michael Gove’s reforms are all about setting schools free from the interference of politicians in local authorities and thanks