Not quite heirs to Blair

I have a column in the March edition of Public Finance, explaining why the coalition's public service reforms are not as much in the Blair tradition as they imagine.

David Cameron’s closest coalition colleagues are said to follow a ‘cult of Blair’ on domestic reforms. They proceed with pace, avoiding Tony Blair’s lament that he acted too slowly. They proudly display the scars on their backs from opposition to their changes. And they are extending some New Labour initiatives in health and education. But they have parted company with its ‘investment and reform’ approach in important ways - and that might be their downfall.

You can read the full column here.

Blair's education revolution bears fruit

Not having read Tony Blair's book yet, I shall leave it to others to litter their blogs with extracts and index-referencing. But it is notable that his memoirs appear on a day when the government has published remarkable data confirming the success of academies.

This is not about Michael Gove's decision to focus his attention on persuading outstanding schools to join the movement, or the development of free schools, on which initial overambition has been replaced by cautious realism. Rather it is about the relatively unsung success of Blair's academies which were embraced (albeit with some pointless interference with their independence) by his successor despite earlier misgivings.

Today sees a lot of attention on the limited number of 'new' academies - there are 32 outstanding schools that heroically managed to convert in time for a new term, with 110 more on the way - but it is also the start of term for 64 academies that had been initiated by the Labour government. They are largely in disadvantaged areas, replacing failing schools and offering new hope and leadership for thousands of youngsters.

Early indications suggest that academies taking GCSEs in both 2009 and 2010 have seen their GCSE results rise by a fifth - from 35% to 42% of pupils gaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths - in a single year. This is three times the national average improvement rate (after several years of similar such improvements). Results in schools run by Harris and Ark have exceeded an 11% rise, and the remarkable Mossbourne Academy has stayed above the 80% mark despite a slight dip. When one considers that half of all secondary schools in England couldn't get 30% of their pupils to achieve the five good GCSE standard in 1997, and many inner city schools found 20% a challenge, this is a remarkable result. [Fewer than 200/3200 schools are likely to be below 30% this year]

The challenge for the coalition is three-fold. First, having devoted so much energy to encouraging outstanding schools to become academies, they must refocus their energies on failing schools and turning them around; there are fewer than before, but the challenge remains. Second, they must ensure that their pupil premium does not take money away from academies in disadvantaged areas, which it could well do if the Treasury has its way, and consider linking part of the premium to improvement. And third, they should be much more imaginative in encouraging the development of new academy trusts, particularly for primary schools but also to link outstanding academies with schools that need extra support. There has been a lot of rhetoric about social mobility: we have yet to see the real detail.

Academies are a success story for disadvantaged pupils - but they will only continue to be so if the detail of the policy focus is as relentless as it was when Tony Blair was Prime Minister.

Humanitarianism and the Iraq Inquiry

To the surprise of few, Tony Blair has made a robust case to the Chilcot inquiry for his decision to join the Americans in the invasion of Iraq. His presence reminds us of what we have lost. That we have learnt not much new should be no surprise to anyone. We have had several previous inquiries. But it is still useful to be reminded of two things: we've had lots of process discussion, but Blair has made clear that in the end this was a matter of his making a decision, whatever one's subsequent view of it. And we need Prime Ministers who can take decisions.

But the second point is the context of Blair's own experience, as set out in the 1999 Chicago speech, but also enacted in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, both of which would be illegal in the eyes of those who believe that any action not supported by China and Russia should never take place. I was not in no 10 at the time, so merely observed the debate from outside. But I personally was never entirely convinced of the way the WMD argument was deployed, while believing that Saddam should go not only because of the threat he posed to the region but also to his own people. At the time, I remember thinking that the strongest case made by Blair was a speech to the 2003 Labour spring conference where he used strong moral arguments to link the humanitarian to the WMD case. Blair's evidence to the inquiry that the aftermath planning was focused on humanitarian planning rather than unexpected Al Qaeda insurgency or Iranian-inspired terrorism was particularly interesting in this context.

When one remembers the 110,000 people who died as a result of the inaction in Bosnia of John Major and Bill Clinton or the million deaths as a result of the deplorable failure of the UN in Rwanda, it is to accept that we should never act to stop such murder, which is the corollary of what most of Blair's critics suggest. The real tragedy of the failings in the aftermath of the quick military victory, and the near-consensus in the West about what has resulted, is that it is likely to leave other genocidal leaders like Milosevic or Saddam to continue unfettered unless China changes the habits of a lifetime and opposes them.

This posting has been picked up by the keeptonyblairforpm blog

The height of hypocrisy

The Sunday papers are full of sanctimonious twaddle about the choice of the Belgian prime minister and Baroness Ashton for the two top European jobs, heaping blame on Gordon Brown for failing to do something or other that is not entirely clear, given that Britain still won one of the top jobs despite their unpatriotic efforts effectively to promote Benelux federalists over the outstanding British leader of recent times. Has there ever been a clearer example of people ignoring the consequences of their own position? Given that these newspapers - shamefully abetted by the Conservative front bench - actively campaigned against the one British figure who could have brought real relevance to the Presidency of the EU, isn't a morning of silent embarrassment the least we could expect in atonement for own culpability in the outcome?

Dave's Euro man wants Euro-taxes

With William Hague telling Euro-leaders not to back Tony Blair for the Presidency of Europe, it is instructive to read the considered thoughts of his most serious rival, Herman Van Rompuy, who one assumes to be David Cameron's preferred candidate in the absence of any loony right-wingers from Eastern Europe in the running. According to today's Times, Dave's man wants to see new European taxes. It is no wonder that the well-informed Ben Brogan is urging a small wager on Tony Blair winning through. With 4/1 available at Paddy Power, it doesn't sound like bad advice.

Why are the Tories descending into partisan pettiness?

A couple of years ago, David Cameron was keen to stress the all-embracing nature of the new Conservatives. They were nothing less than the new Blairites, he trilled, though not all of us were convinced.

But the message was clear: the partisan nastiness so aptly identified by Theresa May in her evocation of the 'nasty party' was a thing of the past. Voters who had shifted to Labour could turn to the new cuddly Tories safe in the knowledge that they had the national interest, rather than the partisan concerns of a minority of right wing obsessives, at heart.

Of course, in getting elected, David Cameron had to throw a few crumbs to the obsessives, pledging to abandon the European Christian Democrats in favour of a barmy alliance of fringe parties cobbled together among the also-rans of Europe. Nobody believed he really meant it. And then it came to pass. The Tories now sit with the Latvian Waffen SS memorial party, while decent middle of the roaders like Edward McMillan Scott are booted out.

And when there is a real chance that one of the greatest British politicians of our age could become the President of Europe, what is the considered response of the man who would be Cameron's Foreign Secretary? "He should be let nowhere near the job," he says, using the sort of diplomatic skills normally apparent in UKIP.

Tony Blair often put the national interest above partisan interests, appointing able Tories like Chris Patten to key posts in Northern Ireland, for example. Is it really too much to expect David Cameron to do the same?

The dangers of repetition in Obama's America

Janet Daley in today's Telegraph has succumbed to the delusions prevalent among many Republicans in the United States. She believes that Obama has 'staggered to the left' which would be good news for them. Aside from the fact that Obama is too cautious even to consider the level of state ownership that has been brought in here in Britain, Daley and her soulmates in the Right wing magazines, on Fox News and in rightwing talk radio Stateside are making precisely the same mistakes that the Tories made in Britain in 1997. In other words, they are fighting the pre-election battles after the election has been won, believing their own propaganda along the way.

The fact is that Obama is both governing as he said he would and is doing so largely from the centre. On Iraq, he may withdraw combat troops but will leave 35,000 others there, for example. He has scrapped the more egregious of Bush's doctrines, and he is a stronger believer with Hillary Clinton at State in tough diplomacy. But he is no pacifist. And on health and education, his policies involve taking on vested interests where necessary, for example to improve educational accountability or to provide affordable universal health cover.

With approval ratings above 60%, the Republican attacks have little traction beyond the usual suspects. But this is not to say that Obama is not in danger of repeating an error of the early Blair years himself. Before the 1997 election, Labour made relatively modest pledges on things like class sizes. But by creating a raft of aspirational if over-ambitious targets in the following years - largely at the insistence of the Treasury apart from the initial literacy targets - the Government allowed relatively good progress in the public services to be portrayed as 'failure' because those targets had been missed. The level of Obama's ambition is such that he could suffer a similar fate. For example, nobody believes there will be univeral health cover in the US by the time of the next election because of the complexity of change: Obama should set milestones that can be met along the way to demonstrate progress towards the greater goal.

Nevertheless, it is the Republicans who are suffering most in their delusions at the moment. Like the Tories in 1997, they simply haven't come to terms with the simple fact that they lost the election.

Religion can be part of the solution

Tony Blair's new Interfaith Foundation has set as its mission the goal of bringing leading figures in the major world faiths together to promote respect and understanding between the major religions, and to encourage inter-faith initiatives to tackle global poverty and conflict. Cynics in Britain - particularly in the commentariat - like to mock such initiatives. One would never see a piece like the cover story in this week's Time in a British equivalent - it lacks the requisite supply of cynicism. Of course, most major religions have parts of their history of which they cannot be proud. But religion, contrary to the fashionable militant atheism of our time, can also be a powerful force for good, and can help to tackle some of our great conflicts. I hope the new foundation helps to show that to be the case.

Sour grapes?

Surely Rupert Murdoch can't be so upset about his Harper Collins publishing house losing the rights to the Blair memoirs to Gail Rebuck and Random House, that he had to have this acidic and tendentious excuse for analysis appear the Sunday Times?

Standards and structures

I have a column in this morning's Independent on the standards v structures debate in education. Here's an extract:

In a curious echo of where the Tories are now, we then attacked the government for its failures on literacy and numeracy – standards were much lower then – and positioned Labour as the party of higher standards. Blunkett had made this his goal in his first statement as shadow education secretary. And he quickly embraced performance tables, testing and Ofsted inspections as the means to that end. Standards not structures became his catchphrase.

Last year, as Labour set about creating city academies and trust schools, Tony Blair told the annual Specialist Schools and Academies Trust conference: "Over time, I shifted from saying 'it's standards not structures' to realising that school structures could affect standards." More recently, we have had the new schools' secretary Ed Balls promise that he would "focus our efforts not on structures but on standards in the classroom," while announcing plans to speed up Blair's academies programme.

Now that the Tories have ditched selection and embraced academies, such debate as there is between the parties is over how to lift standards in primary and secondary schools. But that is because the structural change is being put in place and has cross-party support.

Where Blair's education policy got us....

Although Gordon Brown has had a remarkably good press from the Tory papers, including the Daily Mail, for his conference speech, the Mail still continues to ask, as if rhetorically:

As for our schools, it's all very well for Mr Brown to say: "Education is my passion." Didn't Mr Blair tell us more than ten years ago that it was all three of his top priorities - and where did that get us?

Since I'm fed up reading such crass comment, here are a dozen ways in which our schools are better now than they were in 1997.

1. Over 100,000 more 11-year-olds can read, write and add up well now each year than could do so in 1997.

2. Over 25% more 15 year olds get five good GCSEs every year - whether you include English and Maths or not. Results have improved fastest in London. The number of non-selective schools where 70% or more pupils get five good GCSEs rose from 83 in 1997 to 603 in 2006.

3. The universal free nursery education promised by Maggie Thatcher in 1972 but never delivered is now available to all 3 and 4 year olds, with their hours increasing. Sure Start children's centres link this with other services including childcare.

4. Most schools are much better at stretching brighter pupils and helping weaker pupils than they were ten years ago, as the culture of expectations has been transformed, with Gifted and Talented programmes now widespread.

5. Over 1000 new schools have been built, and many more have had vital repairs.

6. There are now over 100 open academies and most schools have a specialism, which has led to a completely transformed attitude to education in our secondary schools.

7. Over 30,000 more teachers work in our schools, and teachers and heads are now reasonably paid, with performance pay part of the system.

8. Teaching is one of the top careers of choice, not of last resort.

9. Our schools have entered the 21st century with modern IT equipment and teachers who know how to use it, increasingly imaginatively in lessons.

10. Over 130,000 more teaching assistants now work in our schools, making one-to-one tuition easier and providing vital support to teachers.

11. There is far more school sport than there was, both in and out of school hours, and teachers are helping provide it. School playing fields are much better protected.

12. Thousands of schools now provide extended facilities, including breakfast clubs, after-school homework, IT, sports and arts, and all will soon do so. Few did so in 1997.

I could list many more examples. But, to the question (presumably snidely intended) asking where making education Tony Blair's top priorities got us, that's where.

Alastair's account

I have just finished reading Alastair Campbell's diaries. The 700-page tome is more rewarding than it might look. There are plenty of nuggets and surprises, as well as confirmation of quite a lot more about what was happening in Downing Street. His portrait of Tony Blair is credible and creditable, particularly on Northern Ireland and on the international stage. But on the domestic front, this is not a book for policy buffs: aside from his visceral belief in comprehensive education, there is little sign of the battles for policy reform that defined the Blair years - and what will be seen as successes in health and education - as much as what he achieved in Belfast, Kosovo and Sierra Leone. For me, the accounts of the internal meetings with Gerry Adams, Ian Paisley and David Trimble were the greatest source of fascination. For others, it may be the Washington visits. But what Alastair lacks in domestic policy detail, he makes up for in an obsessive dislike for the media, which was understandable but destructive both to him and, for a time, to the Downing Street media operation. As one who did some spinning in Labour's first term, I can also sympathise with his feelings of despair over how the government was covered after its initial honeymoon, so much so that you had to go abroad to get a sense of proportion about the extent of Blair's achievements at home. Nevertheless, this is a must-read book for anyone with an interest in the internal machinations of politics, though it is not the whole story.