How Dare You Treat Us Like Other People?

Conservative local councillors across the country are extremely annoyed with the education secretary for treating them like local councillors. The gormless Bride of Gove has published a white paper which proclaims, no doubt purely as a suggestion, that in the name of local government and parent power all schools will be forced to become Gove Learning Emporia whether or not anyone else wants them to; and that the requirement for parent governors will be dropped. It is certainly refreshing to see that even the gormless Bride of Gove can take on the mantle of the nanny state; but her party's provincial enforcers are less convinced, especially those who have taken the trouble to shill the Conservatives' virtues to the local mugs and probably hoped to keep a lid on things until after the first week in May. "Now we will have no relationship with them," mourned one veteran, who has spent the past eighteen years not knowing what kind of people she is working for. "All of a sudden it's going - after all the hard work and the years of deeply caring about it." Another, who is a former head teacher, pondered with incomprehension the problem of why Conservative councils should be treated with the same contempt as the rest of the country: "This seems to be throwing out good practice for the sake of dogma and risking the possibility that standards may fall ... I'm not comfortable with coercion. If the idea is such a wonderful idea, why is there any need for coercion?" Well, why indeed; what can be the explanation?