Back from his summer holiday in Barbados, Tony Blair is refreshed, buoyant and brimming with confidence. Gordon Brown is more or less behaving himself. With the exception of a few easy-to-ignore trade union leaders, nobody now seriously disputes his right to go at a moment of his own choosing. The Tories are in effect leaderless until the New Year. Within reason, Mr Blair, unfettered by his decision not to fight a fourth election, can for the moment do just about anything he wants. But scratch below the surface and you will find something else: a frustration that too much time has been wasted and an impatience to do as much as possible with the two, at most three, years left to him. Nothing triggers those feelings of frustration and impatience more than Labour's failure to improve the bottom 25% of the nation's secondary schools. Mr Blair needs no reminding of the evidence that during his time in office, social mobility has declined. Unhesitatingly, he puts the blame on the education system. For a prime minister who from the outset declared schools to be the government's over-riding priority-who will forget "education, education, education"?-it's quite an admission.
展开▼
