Old Labour, Red Danger? Or: How I won the war and other stories...

Kinnock speaks out against school reforms

Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has criticised the government's education plans as "at best a distraction and at worst dangerous".

Showing that he's lost none of his old-school waffle-making ability the ginger non-Belgian added "There is a multiple divergence of governance proposed - specialist schools, trust schools and academies - that gives the appearance of choice, but will not be available to many. This whole approach is also not relevant to rural and semi-rural schools."

He's right of course, its the good old 'myth of choice' again. Its a bit like being told that there's a great hospital waiting to operate on your hip in Cumbernauld, all very well and good in theory but unlikely to see much take-up from the shambling masses on hip replacement waiting lists in Cornwall (for arguments sake).

Perhaps more important is that most Heads oppose the latest set of education reforms too.

An interesting spin on this was put across by Steve Richards who saw this as all part of the Iraq war blowback. Blair had to get domestic on our asses to prove he cared. Kelly inherited his latest attack of radicalism and here we are. Hell OK, but why follow through? Well, as Richards' notes, she couldn't just ditch it like the much-lamented and far more sensible Tomlinson Reforms of the curriculum and qualifications, because Captain Tony had made reform and his absence of reverse gears a focus for T3 (that's term 3 by the way not Termination of the third great public service, honest).

Full Tomlinson REPORT ~ for those interested.

What is intriguing about Kinnock is which straw broke his back. Not tuition fees - which apparently pushed him, or steady privatisation and break-up of the NHS which should be pushing him, or the disastrous adventures in Mesopotamia. Still, I suppose he had to get it eventually.

I always felt that the biggest danger of New Labour's reformists was that they believed, ex-marxists virtually to a man as they are, that they had understood the dilemma of choice and waste. In other words that they had come to terms with the market. The problem was that they saw regulators and targets as all that were needed to ensure that the market could deliver social goods.

This tends to leave you with leaky safety nets and second class services for the those who have less market value, or poorer access to the market - whether through lack of understanding of its processes or because they are valued less by its mechanisms. After all who wants a kid in their school whose Dad turns up p*ssed at parents evenings.