The Deputy Prime Minister has said: "If you set up a school and it becomes a good school, the great danger is that everyone wants to go there."
So, on Prescott's reckoning, good schools are bad and bad schools are good. Or to put it another way, the pursuit of mediocrity must take precedence over the pursuit of excellence.
This is not an argument I can accept, nor for that matter can Tony Blair. After nine years in power and eight toothless education Bills, he knows it is high time he delivered on his promise to make education top priority. And that means levelling up, not Prescott's defeatist levelling down.
Reform is long over due. Despite spending £1 billion on anti-truancy measures, 55,000 children stay away from class every day. More than half of GCSE pupils fail to get good maths and english grades. Shropshire schools are better than most, but there is still plenty of room for improvement.
Blair wants to set schools and parents free. Schools would be free of council control and free to decide their own admissions policy. Parents would be free to choose the right school for their child. Popular schools would be free to expand.
Conservatives will back Blair if he makes the pursuit of excellence his goal. But if he surrenders to the Labour dinosaurs, he will not deserve our support.
