Tony Blair this week turned his back on the school his party once cherished. Jon Slater and Warwick Mansell report from Blackpool
It is not often a Cabinet minister asks you to look at her legs.
Well perhaps for readers of Edwina Currie’s diaries it may not seem that surprising. But this was over morning coffee at the Imperial hotel in Blackpool, with TES reporters and government advisers on hand.
The legs emerged as Estelle Morris reflected on 10 days of turmoil following the A-levels furore and her very public spat with Sir William Stubbs, former head of the Qualification and Curriculum Authority. The Times had pictured her on its front page with her legs entwined in an apparently defensive posture.
Ms Morris wondered how interested The Times would have been in her legs if she had been a male minister. “Anyhow, look,” she said, “my legs are always like that. It is because I always feel cold.”
On the Monday at the start of the Labour conference Ms Morris seemed relaxed, but she also clearly feels hard done by.She admitted she had found some of the personal attacks unfair It has certainly been a tough few days for the Education Seretary. Newspapers called for her resignation with The Sun in particular gunning for her in the most vicious terms.
Sir William sacked by Ms Morris did not go quietly and may hold the “smoking gun” as Mike Tomlinson, the former Chief Inspector, completes his investigation into the fiasco, the initial part of which was was widely dubbed a whitewash.
Her 10-day nightmare began with the fiasco over criminal checks for school staff. The Department of Education and Skills had panicked and tightened up the rules in the wake of the Soham murders. Ms Morris had been on on holiday and on her return had to make an embarrassing U-turn to ensure schools could open with all their staff.
She obviously feels she is carrying the can for failures by the QCA on A-levels. But with Ms Currie giving the political world something else to talk about, the spotlight has moved, although the story is far from over.
On the fringe meeting circuit, Ms Morris and her colleagues were given an easy time, with A-levels hardly mentioned. Perennial conference questions, about grammar schools, unfair funding, inclusion and over-testing, were easily batted off.
