Michael Gove, as Mehdi Hasan reports today, is seen as one of the most polite men in politics. But he is also, as Mehdi points out, an ideological Thatcherite and, as Education Secretary, is now overseeing a policy agenda that benefits the most socially exclusive state schools in the land, sometimes at the cost of less-well-off ones.

I thoroughly recommend reading his piece.

Meanwhile Richard Darlington, the former Labour special adviser who is now head of the Open Left project at Demos, has written for Progress about Labour's education debate against the backdrop of what he describes as "an onslaught from the coalition" on schools. His piece is also well worth a read.