Chris Wimpress

Tori Amos Interview: Her New Album 'Gold Dust', US Politics And The Dark Side Of The Internet

2012-09-27T08:46:21-04:00

It might be surprising that an artist like Tori Amos has managed to produce three - count 'em - retrospectives of her work over the past six years. Yet for die-hard fans (and for followers of this siren, entering her third decade as a recording artist, the die-hard bit is usually implied), her latest offering of selected tracks from the past 20 years will probably be seen as new material. It often sounds as though, on her new collection Gold Dust, the 50-year old Amos is trying to answer questions posed by her younger self.

She doesn't quite put it that way, of course. "The idea of a memory box came to mind, a sonic memory box," she tells HuffPost UK on the phone from Florida. "It feels like I'm having a conversation with 56 different instruments, and the pictures that I'm having in my mind while playing these songs are different pictures than I had when I wrote these songs."

Those 56 different instruments form the Dutch Metropole Orchestra, with whom she has already collaborated once since her most recent album, the well-received Night of Hunters. Amos describes her new record as the result of touring with the orchestra, "listening to what they were doing, so I would respond to what they were doing".

Watch 'Flavor' from Tori's new album Gold Dust:

There seems something about her recent switch to working solely with a classical label which has encouraged her to open up, once again. For much of the last decade, her albums have been explicitly concepts, with her infamous self-actualisation occluded in favour of telling someone else's story. Yet recently Amos has seemed ready to open up again. Perhaps she feels the need to re-state who she is.

"Somebody said to me recently, 'How can you sing Silent All These Years when you're not silent anymore?'" she offers. "And I said, 'How do you know I'm not silent any more, about something that happened two weeks ago and I didn't speak up like I should, or was intimidated to say something?' Maybe there are things that I don't speak up about, so that song can still be very current, even to me, but the pictures change."

This seems strange, a sense of being slightly mis-understood, from an artist whose USP has been about being so opaque. "You can be self-empowered and still learning about how you think about things daily," she says. "There are two ways to wake up. You can wake up thinking about what you know, or you wake up thinking and saying 'What can I learn?.' That's a very different approach."

20 Years Ago - Tori Amos In 1992 Launching Her First Album Little Earthquakes

In terms of song-choice, Amos has eschewed tracks which once garnered airplay. Cornflake Girl, Pretty Good Year, A Sorta Fairy Tale , are all absent. It would have been interesting to see how Amos might have turned Professional Widow into an orchestral track, since it's already morphed from its neurotic-baroque original to a Number 1 Ibiza club classic, but no.

Instead the tracklist is dominated by songs which previously had string arrangements, and a few which Amos has decided were fit for orchestral treatment. Slightly Little Earthquakes heavy, it is very much a record for long-standing fans, of whom there still remain huge numbers. For while Amos vanished from the mainstream years ago and nowadays often leaves rock music critics in despair, she still sells out concerts across the world.

Standout tracks include Yes, Anastasia, which has acquired a bullish, almost Roman blast of brass. A reflective tone during Winter features warm, mellow horns. Things have indeed changed, but angst and fear have been replaced by the self-assurance of a woman approaching the afternoon of her life. The production on every track is crisp, meticulous and expansive.

Although it's a record likely to be best appreciated by people who've grown up listening to Tori Amos, she says that the way she constructed the record was partly based on a new generation of (mostly) women who come up to her after her shows. For Amos, her status as a conduit of catharsis for those who've been raped and abused remains just as powerful.

"The internet wasn't really part of the conversation in 1992, but what's worrying is that the idea of abuse and sexual abuse is not lessening," she says. "Even though there seems to be more information out there, so many people come to the shows with stories now, more so, even. And that's worrying, because even though I think a lot of things were more hush-hush in those days, in some ways it's so accepted and prevalent, now. Particularly online. And what I've been finding is that they get involved in situations before they know it.

"It's the shame and the worry that they won't have a family or friends if they speak out. The perpetrators know how to manipulate and have learned the information on how to do it online, I think. There are so many women who are ashamed. I've had judges come to the backstage who are caught up in something - powerful women who are involved in a demeaning relationship, but are too ashamed, worried of the exposure."

The switch from alternative rock to playing with an orchestra seems to have come with pleasure and pain for Amos. "I played with them, which I've never done before." she says. "Usually in the pop world in the last 20 years, you record the master take of the artist separately because it's so expensive having an orchestral date - can you imagine if you're there and you have a terrible performance by the artist? So the idea has been always, get the artist right, no matter how long it takes. Sometimes you only get an hour for each song."

"A band usually can jam," she says, ruefully. "The difficult thing I've had to learn, in front of thousands of people last year, that with an orchestra you would need to build the jams on paper. It slipped my mind.

"The first time we played the programme back-to-back with no stops was a live show," she says. "And at the second song, I thought 'Oh. My. God. I can't just nod my head and start improvising.' So for the live shows now we're building in instrumentals for the orchestra. We look bar-for-bar at each piece and see where does it make sense? How is it fluid? You can't just add bars to bars, or you hear the sellotape."

This from a woman who at the age of eleven was thrown out of the prestigious Peabody Institute for non-conforming. She insists the tale of her being expelled for refusing to learn how to sight-read is apocryphal, but I wonder if there is something in her most recent material which harks back to her experiences at the Peabody?

'You know I met with the Dean, I saw him in New York not so long ago, and he told me they're training musicians differently than when I was a kid," she says. "That's good. But there were things that I did learn, and that was to analyse a work of music, and it's helped me."

The title track Gold Dust is probably the most faithful to the original, and was the most obviously personal track on an album which seemed a social commentary on a post 9/11 America. I suggest to Tori that, since then, her works have become increasingly political. I wonder what her thoughts are on the state of US politics a decade on, with yet another fractious presidential election looming?

"What I find most disconcerting is that certain issues come into it, such as abortion," she says. "The fact that religion plays such a part in how people vote troubles me, troubles me as a minister's daughter. Because I always felt that the separation of church and state was what our forefathers and foremothers really fought for.

"But when I walk to people here, certain issues seem to be determining who they're going to vote for, which I feel should not at all be in the mix. That the church has so much power. Or the idea that what you believe in, it's scary."

Yes, it's political. Tori Amos in an alter-ego during her 2007 tour

I suggest it's because the politicians don't have answers and are focusing on dog whistle politics? "I don't know if the average person really has faith in Washington anymore," she replies. "You used to think those people really wanted to make changes, but they don't make changes. Not for the masses anyway."

Did she have higher hopes for Obama than what the president has achieved? "I voted for Obama, of course. But I think that the country was in a real state when he took over and I understand that you can't make excuses. But so many people from the economic crash, they lost everything. I just see the fallout from those disasters. People who really worked hard, that believed if you work hard, it would somehow be fair. But it wasn't fair that a lot of people who've caused these problems have gotten away with it. So where do you turn to, as a person who believed. Really believed?"

Away from her own music, Amos is in the process of setting up her own label, designed to nurture independent artists. She's still working on a musical which has been struggling to get to the stage. She seems busy. Is she more free creatively, now, than she's ever been?

"Yes," she says, after a pause. "But I've had to work hard for it. The trick with that is you need to surround yourself with people who will push you. And you push yourself. There is an argument that says when you're fighting something, creativity can blossom out of that. But there are different fights, you know."

Nick Clegg's Apology Over Tuition Fees Might Just Work

2012-09-20T04:17:23-04:00

It's the season for apologising. Over the past week we've seen quite a few public figures saying sorry for what was said, done or not done in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster. Now Nick Clegg's getting in on the act over tuition fees, and while some people are never going to forgive the Lib Dems there are good reasons to suggest that Clegg's language and timing might just prove a masterstroke.

Nobody saw Clegg's act of contrition coming, although in some ways his apology for pledging not to increase tuition fees isn't a surprise because Lib Dems have been talking ruefully about this 2010 election promise a bit lately.

Newly-promoted minister Jo Swinson said on tuition fees a few months ago: "In opposition you can just take the purely populist route on every issue and also people don’t in quite the same way make sure that everything stacks up."

That's not quite the same as saying sorry, of course. Sorry is one of the most powerful words in the English language, which is why it's baffling that politicians don't use it more often. Remember the roar that went up in Derry when David Cameron used it, to apologise on behalf of the British government for the Bloody Sunday massacre?

No less significant was Boris Johnson's decision to go to Liverpool to personally apologise for his insensitive comments about Liverpudlians in the wake of the murder of Ken Bigley in Iraq. In both cases, it worked.

Contrast that with Tony Blair, who has never said sorry for the Iraq war, but even more controversially has never apologised for the "dodgy dossier". Even to his biggest supporters there remains something quite distasteful about Blair's abject refusal to be contrite for the dossier, which was devastating on far too many levels. Blair insists he never lied, but that's correct only semantically.

The situation is best expressed by Kevin Marsh, editor of Radio 4's Today programme at the time it was engulfed in the dossier row. He wrote recently in his blog:

"substitute for the word 'lied' the phrase 'created the truth' or 'misled the British public about the certainty of the intelligence and the conclusions that could be drawn from it' and most people might well take the view he and those around him are guilty as charged."

The furthest Blair has ever gone was to express "deep regret" for the 179 service personnel killed in Iraq. He didn't get around to expressing this "regret" until 2011, but that's not the same as saying sorry, and everyone knows it. Tony Blair's political reputation at home is arguably just as tarnished today as the day he left office five years ago.

Blair may not have apologised for Iraq but Ed Miliband sort-of did, saying it was "wrong" because the Allies didn't exhaust all the United Nations options before going to war. Actually, Miliband and the Labour party have said sorry quite a bit in the last year or so. Sorry for letting immigration get out of control, sorry for not regulating the bankers properly, there's been a stream of contrition from the New Labour years. Has it helped to build to what some polls suggest is Labour's current 15-point lead over the Tories?

There seem to be some rules which govern the success or failure of a political apology. Is it timely? Does it seem unforced? Is the language proportionate? If the answer to all three is yes, saying sorry publicly seems to do more good than harm.

Sometimes sorry hasn't worked even for Boris, who made another apology this week this time over The Spectator magazine's decision in 2004 to reprint false claims about drunken Hillsborough fans. Boris said this week that he was "very, very sorry" - the Hillsborough Families Support Group said it was too little, too late.

Equally David Cameron's apologies can sometimes seem just as off-the-cuff as the remarks which caused the offence in the first place. He said sorry to veteran Labour MP Denis Skinner for suggesting he start drawing his pension, he apologised to people with Tourette's for using the condition to poke fun at Ed Balls, he apologised for making a quasi-sexist jibe at backbench Tory Nadine Dorries for being "frustrated" during PMQs. In all cases these apologies seemed perhaps too quick and casual - and as such insincere.

On that basis, Clegg's contrition stands a fair chance of going some way to detoxifying his own brand and that of his party. It's come soon enough after the event to be relevant, but not so soon as to seem flippant. Equally it's far enough away from the next general election to not seem like an act of desperation, and comes at a time when Lib Dem leadership grumbles are a long way from becoming a clamour.

The manoeuvres by leadership rival Vince Cable on Newsnight, where he suggested he'd opposed the tuition fees pledge all along, indicate the Business Secretary thinks Clegg's apology might well pack a punch.

The contrary indicators are that the Lib Dems' poll ratings had tumbled substantially long before the tuition fees hike was announced in 2010 - they were already down to 10 percent in successive YouGov polls by the October of that year, more than a month before the fees hikes were announced. Some people will always hate the Lib Dems for getting into bed with the Tories, and the polling trends suggest tuition fees only worsened an existing problem.

Cameron Drops More Heathrow Hints As Devolved Ministers Worry About Aviation Strategy

2012-09-19T08:46:12-04:00

Downing Street has dropped yet more hints that David Cameron might consider going into the next election supporting a third runway for Heathrow Airport.

A communiqué issued by Number 10 on Wednesday lunchtime suggests Heathrow was near the top of the agenda when the prime minister met senior ministers from the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland governments earlier in the day.

The meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee held at Number 10 focused first on the stagnant economy, but the second item was the UK's future aviation policy. The communiqué reads:

Ministers .. agreed that aviation makes a strong contribution to economic growth in all parts of the UK and that it would be important to maintain connectivity between Heathrow, as the UK’s only hub airport and the rest of the UK and other initiatives to enhance connectivity.

There was no mention of alternate transport infrastructure methods like high-speed rail or more road-building in the note issued by Number 10, which will fuel speculation that Cameron is now focused on maintaining Heathrow's hub status.

Aviation experts believe only new runways at the airport in west London would ensure it remains a global hub, when faced with increasing competition from rivals in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

In the meantime certain slots between Heathrow and cities like Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast are regulated to some extent. Governments in the devolved nations are concerned that as Heathrow takeoff and landing slots become increasingly scarce, airlines will want to withdraw domestic routes in favour of more lucrative long-haul ones.

Although domestic flights into Heathrow are less profitable to airlines like British Airways than long-haul routes they do serve as feeders for the most profitable services. Their value was underlined by Virgin Atlantic's decision to start feeder services from Manchester to Heathrow from next year, a move the company said was in response to BA's near-monopoly on feeder routes from regional airports to Heathrow.

The government insists there will be no U-turn on Heathrow's third runway in this Parliament and in effect the decision was kicked into the long grass until after the next general election. A report by the respected economist Howard Davies is not due to complete until the summer of 2015, although Davies is expected to produce an interim report on aviation capacity in the south-east of England at the end of 2013.

The findings of that interim report could inform how the main parties write the transport sections of their manifestos at the next election. At the moment the three largest political parties all oppose the building of a third runway at Heathrow, though all say something has to be done about airport capacity around London.

There is spare capacity for aircraft movements at Gatwick and Stansted but neither are hub airports providing transfers between long-haul flights. Solutions to the problem of capacity at Heathrow range from building high-speed rail links to airports which have spare capacity to the construction of an entirely new hub airport somewhere to the east of London. All of the options come with political risks. MPs in and around west London believe they might lose their seats if a third runway went ahead, but many MPs around the Thames Estuary are equally opposed to a new airport being built there.

Justine Greening lost her job as transport secretary in Cameron's Cabinet reshuffle earlier this month, almost entirely due to her fervent opposition to a new runway at Heathrow. Greening, who represents Putney in southwest London, was moved to International Development, technically a sideways move but one that was widely seen as a sidelining.

Maria Miller, New Equalities Minister, Spells Out Her Support For Gay Marriage

2012-09-19T03:52:29-04:00

Maria Miller has sought to head off claims that she privately opposes gay marriage by writing a column in The Independent firmly supporting the proposed change. Her intervention follows concerns that despite being the government's new equalities minister Miller privately opposes extending civil rights to gay people.

"The state should not stop two people undertaking civil marriage unless there are good reasons, and I believe being gay is not one of them," she writes in her column in the Independent on Wednesday morning. "When it comes to the state's role in marriage, I and the government think a change is needed.

"At the moment the state does not support same-sex couples in the same way that it supports a man and woman choosing to celebrate their commitment," Miller goes on. "Many people in civil partnerships already refer to their partner as their 'husband' or 'wife' , but they are not technically 'married' and do not have the option to become so. I see no reason to perpetuate this.

Maria Miller wasn't an MP when Labour passed the Civil Partnerships Act in 2004, which allowed same-sex unions granting almost identical rights as traditional marriages. But since entering Parliament in 2005 Miller voted against allowing same-sex couples an equal right to fertility treatment and also opposed same-sex couples being allowed to adopt children.

This patchy voting record on equalities prompted widespread concern a fortnight ago when she was made equalities minister. She has also been absent from several other "equality votes", and her record on abortion issues - she has supported lowering to 20 weeks the maximum termination date in the past - has given women's rights groups concern.

The government seems likely to introduce gay marriage legislation early next year, with MPs almost certain to be given a free vote on the issue. A consultation has produced a record 228,000 responses, but ministers won't say at this stage what proportion of these are in favour or against the proposed change.

Traditionalists opposed to gay marriage are likely to stage a series of demonstrations at Tory Party Conference in Birmingham next month. Privately Tories worry that the issue is costing them members in heartland areas, with some party agents reporting mass cancellations of subscriptions by Church of England voters.

The government insists that churches which don't want to conduct gay marriages won't be forced to; but this has not allayed the concerns of traditionalists, who are opposed to any form of marriage for same-sex couples because they claim it is forbidden by the Bible.

GCSE's Scrapped By Michael Gove In Favour Of Ebacc - Does Stephen Twigg Believe What He's Saying?

2012-09-17T11:46:25-04:00

Not an easy afternoon for Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg, who had to stand up and respond to Michael Gove's heavily-trailed announcement that GCSEs in core subjects would be scrapped in favour of an English Baccalaureate qualification, a process that will begin in 2015.

Twigg's central claim was that Gove had failed to get a grip on the marking fiasco which has led to the grade thresholds for GCSE English being moved over the summer. As such, said Twigg, Gove couldn't be trusted to make any further reforms to the GCSE system. As arguments go, it was pretty weak and everyone knew it, particularly when there is a cross-party consensus that it's down to OFQUAL to sort out the mess with this summer's results, free from interference from politicians.

It seemed as though Twigg was desperate to sound like he was opposing something, without being all that clear which aspects of the new policy he didn't like.

"Schools today do need to change," said Twigg. "We need to address the challenges of the 21st Century, but I simply don't accept we achieve that by returning to a system abolished as out of date in the 1980s."

This might have been a fair point had Gove's original plan to replace GCSE's been on the table, but it wasn't. The Lib Dems have watered it down so that like GCSEs, the vast majority of 16 year-olds will take the same qualification.

What seems likely is that over the next few months the clear blue water - if any - between Gove and Twigg will focus on the relative merits of coursework.

"The best system does involve coursework and project work," Twigg told the Commons. "Surely our system should value skills as well as knowledge?"

This thought was immediately echoed by other Labour MPs.

In response, the Tories are saying that coursework actually favours the rich; that middle class kids are helped by their often better-educated parents, whereas poorer kids can't get that sort of help at home. It will interesting to see whether the Tories can produce any concrete evidence for that.

At the moment Labour is privately trying to keep its powder as dry as possible on these reforms, because only the most basic outline has been revealed by Gove. The suspicion is that the reforms will end up being far less radical than Gove originally wanted because the Lib Dems have curtailed his efforts.

Labour are also in a difficult position because of the timing of the changes - they won't even start until 2015 and the indication from Gove on Monday was that it would be a slow and gradual change.

By that time it's unlikely that Michael Gove will be Education Secretary - it is more likely on current polling to be Stephen Twigg.

This affects how far Labour can go in criticising the reforms; they may find themselves piloting or even trying to champion them in less than three years.

Andrew Adonis, Former Labour Minister And Education Obsessive, Speaks To HuffPost

2012-09-13T08:34:49-04:00

People commonly believe that the character of Lord Julius Nicholson in The Thick Of It is based on Andrew Adonis - or Lord Adonis to give him his proper title. The two men are both seen as rarefied blue-skies types, able to think the unthinkable because they don't have to face the ballot box like MPs do.

And while these things might be true to a point about Adonis, that's where the paralells with Julius end. For whereas the fictional New Labour peer came across as a plummy champagne socialist, Adonis, a Children's Minister under Tony Blair, reveals in his new book Education, Education, Education that he grew up in care homes. His father, a lone parent, spent every waking moment working. Adonis was raised by three institutions in north London and Oxfordshire, and credits a few individuals working in those children's homes and the schools he attended for his success.

"I've never talked about it in the past, I agonised about whether or not to say it," Adonis tells me. "But I thought that since I was writing a book about education, people needed to understand why it was so important to me personally. But what I wanted to make clear that although I was in care, I was essentially brought up by the state and it worked for me. And that is an optimistic lesson."

Adonis is sipping soup in his Lords office not far from Parliament as he talks about his early life. He talks incredibly fast - 30 minutes of conversation with him yield twice the number of words and thoughts you'd expect from another politician. Stopping his brain from skipping from one expansive thought to another seems like something he's trained himself to do, to avoid bamboozling those around him. He's widely viewed as one of the most intelligent people in modern politics, and yet he remains outwardly one of the most modest.

"The individuals who intervened in my life, transformed it, didn't do so in a vacuum," he says. "One was a manager of a children's home, a whole string of them were teachers. What they had in common was that they worked in successful institutions. The reason why I'm so passionate about turning around failing schools is that children who have the misfortune to go to unsucccessful institutions are far less likely to come across the individuals who can transform their lives."

But there is a barely-concealed anger which runs through Adonis' book; anger at the teachers' union leaders who refused to allow any reforms for decades, at the hapless local authority bosses who saw no point in giving kids a proper education because there were no jobs locally anyway, the politicians who tore up the grammar/secondary modern system but essentially ensured the new comprehensives were secondary moderns in all but name. None are spared what is often a surprisingly pithy and merciless takedown by Adonis. Is it accurate to say this mild-mannered man is secretly furious at the generations of wasted opportunity?

"What I find so depressing is that this is where you get the do-nothing left and the do-nothing right coming together," he says. "The do-nothing left who want to excuse the fact that schools are under-preforming by blaming it all on the parents. And the do-nothing right that say it's just a reality that children from poor backgrounds are not going to succeed. This unholy alliance between the two is one of the big things that's been holding back education reform."

Adonis also spares some ire for Whitehall civil servants, who in his view often tended to refuse to "call a spade a spade", peppering education policy documents with euphemisms, seeking to water-down his attempts to restrict the calibre of graduates becoming teachers.

"We had a big problem in education, with nearly half of the comprehensives essentially failing," he says. "But what you need to seek to do is build as wide as possible a concensus about the solutions. What I don't believe in is consensus around lowest common denominator waffle or party claptrap. And unfortunately in education we had far too much of that for generations"

Adonis might speak fast, but rarely does he slip into Whitehall waffle or esoteric theories. He is very easy to understand, as is his book. Because unlike Julius from The Thick of It, Adonis didn't dream up education policies from inside a Westminster silo. He went out and visited failing schools every Thursday and Friday. As such his book is filled with examples of visionary head teachers and troubled schools that were turned around. And although they are not named and shamed, Adonis also references those who resisted reform, from the local authority dinosaurs who didn't see the point, to head teachers who locked Adonis in a room because he'd turned up for a visit when they weren't expecting him.

"This goes to the heart of the problem," he says when we discuss being temporarily incarcerated. "The headteacher didn't want me going around the school without education officials in tow. I was put in a room while re-enforcements were summoned from the Town Hall. That is quite typical. Go around academies and you find headteachers filled with pride. No way would they need local authority officials to be there before they'd show you around. That explifies the transformation."

So that head teacher had been wedded to the old model? "Yeah, and they were embarrassed because none of their kids were getting good GCSEs. There was a fundamental mindset issue. You could have senior managers in local authority telling you there was no point in kids in that area getting a decent education because there were no jobs for them to go into. I'm glad to say we've largely addressed that."

Adonis describes himself as "the teacher's friend", but his book documents tensions between Labour and the teaching unions over the roll-out of academies. Nothing like as bad as the current state of government-teacher relations, granted, but I suggest to him that the teacher's unions were at times a roadblock to reform.

"You have to differentiate between the official position of teachers unions and the real positions of their leaders," he replies, after pausing for a moment. "Generally speaking, the official positions of the teachers unions aren't favourable to reform, however I've lost count of the number of conversations I've had with union general secretaries about what needs to change.

"The best way to get on side with teachers' union leaders is to start talking to them about the education of their own children. What they thought of the schools their children were going to, and how they could improve. And once you start talking to them as parents rather than union leaders you often get a very different story. "

The academies programme championed by Adonis is a policy that's been continued by the Tories and if anything accelerated by Michael Gove. But Adonis admits New Labour didn't get it right the first time - the first few years of the Blair era saw a frenetic process of hiring new teachers, but this didn't raise standards because the institutions the teachers were going into were not fixed. "It took us a long time to get to the transformational policy," he says, a policy he's clearly pleased has been embraced by Michael Gove. Adonis thinks broadly speaking the coalition is "doing the right thing" on education, though he warns that Gove's putative plan to restore something like the O-Level/CSE model would be a "big mistake".

Adonis also worries that the Tories have too readily demonised teachers, and that this is preventing ministers like Michael Gove from being taken seriously. "Those teachers who are not up to the job clearly need to leave, but in my experience that's a very tiny proportion of teachers," says Adonis. "What most teachers need is very strong leadership and motivation, and when it comes to recruiting teachers you want to have the biggest possible pool possible."

It's sometimes hard to gauge whether Education, Education, Education is a potential party-political manifesto for driving further change through England's school system, or the literary equivalent of Adonis' hand on the shoulders of the next generation of politicians. There's a sense that the final chapters of the book are a precis of all the things Adonis learned during his time as children's minister - that failure isn't a bad thing if you learn from it, that good teachers need to be paid good wages, that A-levels need reforming to make them internationally competitive.

Above all one comes away from the book with Adonis' radical ideas about both what a school is and what it's for. "Parents who've not had an education themselves find it hard to explain to their children what a decent education involves, and I completely understand that," he says. "Parents themselves need to be educated by schools about what sort of education they should expect for their children. I do think there's a heavy responsibility of the school. And that's a tough business but the very best schools do it."

Education, Education, Education is on sale now from Biteback Press with a RRP of £12.99

Downing Street Criticised For Failing To Honour Women Sacked From Cabinet As The Men Get Gongs

2012-09-06T07:03:10-04:00

David Cameron is under pressure to explain why he has failed to give honours to the women sacked from Cabinet in this week's reshuffle, while men who've lost their jobs have been given a slew of gongs. The criticism comes after allegations that David Cameron made some of the women he fired cry when he broke the news to them on Tuesday morning.

Number 10 was quizzed on Thursday about why Cheryl Gillan and Caroline Spelman have not been made Dames following their exit from government, whereas Sir George Young will be appointed to the exclusive Order of the Companions after losing his job as Leader of the Commons.

Knighthoods will also be bestowed upon the former agriculture minister James Paice and ex-Solicitor General Edward Garnier, along with Nick Harvey and Gerald Howarth, who lost their jobs in the Ministry of Defence.

Downing Street would only say that the awards to the five men were "a recognition of public service," but was unable to account for why two female secretaries of state - who'd served under David Cameron since 2005, both in opposition and Cabinet - were sidelined.

The men who have been given gongs on Thursday have either served under Cameron for less time or in more junior posts than the women who have been overlooked for honours.

Although the number of women in Cabinet remains the same as before the reshuffle, there's been anger among female politicians that this doesn't account for their seniority. Justine Greening was moved from Transport to International Development - effectively sidelining her for opposing a putative third runway at Heathrow Airport.

The Tories point out that technically Sayeeda Warsi, while losing her job as party chairman, gets a pay-rise after she was given the new title of "senior minister". She will still attend Cabinet but was privately furious that she was initially offered a somewhat tokenistic position in the Foreign Office overseeing Commonwealth affairs.

Various reports surfaced in the wake of the reshuffle that some women cried when they were informed of their sacking, with suggestions that Justine Greening "shouted" at Cameron during her lengthy time in Number 10 on Tuesday morning. Reports in two newspapers strongly suggested that Cheryl Gillan and Caroline Spelman were in tears.

Speaking on ITV's Daybreak programme on Thursday morning, Cameron said in response: "Don't believe everything you read in the papers."

But Cameron remains under pressure to resolve the Tories alleged "women problem". Despite promising to massively increase the number of female Cabinet ministers, halfway through the Parliament the number remains the same as it was in 2010. Female commentators told The Huffington Post on Tuesday that his reshuffle gave them little confidence that the PM was serious about his pledge to give more women top jobs.

Ed Balls Offers A Big Olive Branch To Vince Cable On The Mansion Tax

2012-09-06T04:01:33-04:00

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has sought to capitalise on internal Lib Dem leadership squabbles by sending a strong overture to Vince Cable, who has been tipped as a successor to Nick Clegg. In an interview with The Independent, published on Thursday morning, Balls says he "feels for" Cable, and suggests that Labour is more open to the Business Secretary's idea of a mansion tax on expensive properties than Nick Clegg's proposal for a temporary wealth tax on the super-rich.

A tax on properties worth more than £2m was floated by Cable ahead of this year's "omnishambles" budget but was blocked by senior Tories including George Osborne and the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.

"The person thinking seriously about this was not Nick Clegg but Vince Cable. I feel for Vince and the extent of his frustration," says Balls. "But if [Cable] wants to channel those frustrations into discussions about how we can achieve growth and jobs in the future I'll start discussions with him tomorrow".

The Labour leadership feels that of all the senior coalition ministers only Vince Cable's ideas remain credible, partly because many of the predictions Cable made about the economy before the 2010 general election have now come to pass.

Labour senses that David Cameron's decision to send senior Tory MP Michael Fallon to the Business department was designed to constrict Cable and limit his ability to propose economic policies the Tories don't like. As such Ed Balls' comments on Thursday seem designed to exploit rumours that Cable is unhappy with Nick Clegg's leadership and the general thrust of the coalition's growth strategy.

Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams told The Huffington Post UK on Thursday that Ed Balls' overtures to Vince Cable were just "mischief making".

"Every time Ed Balls says anything you have to fillet the announcement for all sorts of layers of political intrigue. He's all about trying to separate Vince from Nick, or Nick from the rest of the party," he said.

"I don't think it's got anything to do with policy development. The Mansion Tax was around at the last general election, I don't remember Ed Balls or anyone else in Labour being keen on the idea at the time. In fact they spent a lot of time rubbishing our tax proposals."

Balls' intervention comes ahead of a new policy initiative by Labour, due to be launched later on Thursday, which the party describes as "stepping stones" towards the growth policies the opposition party will set out for the next general election. Labour feels it doesn't need to spell these out in terms this far away from 2015 because the world economy remains volatile and prone to further shocks from the Eurozone.

Nevertheless the party remains under pressure to say what it would be doing if it were in power, and was attacked by David Cameron at PMQs on Wednesday, who said Labour offered no alternatives to the coalition's recovery plan. Balls attempts to counter those claims in his interview, where he says his focus will be on sounding out ideas.

"I have thought a lot about it... I'm open to new ways of making our economy strong which requires investment in skills and universities and for the NHS," says Ed Balls, who next week will deliver a speech to the TUC's annual conference in Brighton. His speech to union leaders will be a critical test for the shadow chancellor, who was strongly criticised by several union barons earlier this year for suggesting Labour would be unable to promise greater public sector spending if it won the next election.

Labour hopes that the deteriorating economic outlook since Balls' unpopular speech to the Fabian Society in January means the unions will understand that the next government will still have a massive deficit to deal with when it comes to power. But so far union leaders remain furious at Balls' unwillingness to promise wage rises for public sector workers.

Nick Clegg has faced mounting criticism from his own MPs and peers in recent days, accused by one backbencher, Adrian Sanders, of "bumbling along". The Lib Dem peer Lord Oakeshott and friend of Vince Cable went even further, suggesting Cable would be a better leader for the Lib Dems.

Any Lib Dem leadership contest to replace Clegg would most likely be dominated by Cable and the party's president Tim Farron, and would see the party's relationship with Labour take centre stage. Tim Farron has been openly hostile towards Labour in recent months, using a Huffington Post interview earlier this year to lambast the party for "dishonouring the family".

PMQs Sketch: More Bitch Than Butch

2012-09-05T07:54:47-04:00

"That's just how assertive and butch the leader of the opposition is," said David Cameron of Ed Miliband, after revelations that the Labour leader makes a cup of coffee for Ed Balls every morning.

But the reality was neither man sounded particularly butch at the first PMQs of the autumn term, which conveyed a sense of two leaders who hadn't been to the gym for weeks and were struggling with the dumb bells. Ed Miliband said of George Osborne: "It's good to see the chancellor in his place," adding: "the Paralympic crowd spoke for Britain" by humiliating Osborne with their booing.

Some pollster seems to have told David Cameron that Ed Balls tests worse among the public than Ed Miliband, because the shadow chancellor was the subject of most of the girly swipes from the PM, primarily for wrecking the economy. "I've got my first choice for chancellor, he's got his third choice," Cameron said of Miliband - a rather tired gag which is now almost two years old.

Balls has learned a couple of new hand gestures over the summer to wave at Cameron during PMQs, although as this picture shows, they're not the most masculine, while Miliband gave the impression of someone who'd spent the whole summer jotting down questions to ask the PM for their first encounter after the recess.

There must have been a thesis somewhere. Perhaps Miliband thought he was behaving like a renowned barrister, weaving together seemingly disparate elements to reach a devastating conclusion - the recovery hasn't even got off the ground.

In response Cameron ran the risk of sounding like the voice of the telescreens from Nineteen Eighty-Four, reeling off endless stats and figures which suggested a tiger-like economic boom was just around the corner.

"It takes time, it is difficult but it is the only long term way out of the economic problems," said the PM.

"The private sector is growing and expanding, you're seeing the fastest rate of business creation in a decade."

Both leaders tried to muster their backbenchers into a call-and-response game which can easily be over-used, especially when both sides try to use it at once. Cameron kicked it off, trying to rouse a rallying cry of "nothing" from Tories when asking what Labour had to offer in alternative. Then Ed Miliband tried to get in the act, but really neither side was up for a chanting session.

But Cameron made a pretty silly blunder on his final answer to Ed Miliband, saying: "In spite of all the economic difficulty, this is a united government." What he said immediately after that was lost on everyone, drowned out as it was by loud and genuine Labour hysterics.

Final verdict:

Ed Miliband: Popeye
David Cameron: Olive Oyl

Heathrow's Third Runway - Zac Goldsmith, Richmond MP, Urges Cameron To 'Get Off The Fence'

2012-09-05T07:26:24-04:00

Tory MP Zac Goldsmith has urged David Cameron to "get off the fence" over a third runway at Heathrow and signal whether or not the Conservatives will go into the next election in favour of expanding the airport.

His comments on Wednesday morning follow speculation that the Cabinet reshuffle was designed in part to pave the way for a major political row over the proposed runway, which the Tories cancelled when they came to power in 2010.

On Tuesday Justine Greening lost her job as transport secretary and was sent to the relatively lower-profile Department of International Development while transport minister Theresa Villiers was moved to the Northern Ireland Office. Both women are fierce opponents of building the runway, which would see about 700 homes in west London demolished.

Goldsmith told Today on BBC Radio 4: "It's impossible to pretend this isn't a sign that you open the door to at least the possibility of a third runway."

"Have they changed their mind on Heathrow, yes or no?" he asked.

Goldsmith represents Richmond Park in south west London, a part of the city whose residents can see and hear low-flying Heathrow planes for up to 18 hours a day.

He has threatened to resign as an MP if Cameron comes out in favour of a new runway. The PM fuelled speculation that the Tories could U-turn on their Heathrow policy in June when he refused to rule one out in an answer to Goldsmith in the Commons at PMQs.

There is no suggestion that the government would U-turn and agree to a third runway before the next general election but there is speculation that the Conservative party will signal a change of policy in its next manifesto.

The Labour party - despite signing off the runway before the last election while in government - is likely to be now opposed to Heathrow expansion, as will the Lib Dems.

The government is launching a wide-ranging consultation on Heathrow which is likely to conclude sometime next year. But speaking on Wednesday morning Mayor of London Boris Johnson told Sky News: "There's lots of stuff been coming out of Whitehall to suggest that a U-turn is in progress and they want to build a third runway at Heathrow.

"All the pressure from businesses to do the third runway, that's where the Treasury seems to be focusing its hopes," he said.

"What we need to do now is to end the uncertainty over Heathrow and say 'no folks it is all right, the policy is as it has been which is to say no to a new runway both now and in the future - ie in the next two and a half years."

Business leaders and aviation experts have warned that Heathrow risks losing its "hub status", as other major airports in France, Germany and the Netherlands have the capacity to open up routes to emerging markets in China, India and Brazil.

Airports in Frankfurt and Paris have four runways each, while Schiphol in Amsterdam has six of them. Heathrow's two runways are running at near capacity.

The crisis at the UK's largest airport is temporarily being eased by allowing more simultaneous take-offs and landings on each runway, so-called "mixed mode". The government has allowed limited trials of the more intense use of the runways since last year, but this gives residents near Heathrow less respite from the roar of jet engines on take-off.

Business leaders say that it would take too long to build a new airport elsewhere, and by the time it was finished the UK aviation industry would have lost out to rivals on the near continent.

Everyone accepts that Heathrow was built in the wrong place, too close to central London and in a fog-prone area, but aviation experts believe in the medium term expanding the airport is the only way to keep up with European rivals.

Grant Shapps, the new Chairman of the Conservative party, insisted on Wednesday morning that the government's policy on Heathrow hadn't changed, but insisted that airport capacity in the south-east of England remained a pressing concern that needed to be addressed.

Heathrow's Third Runway - Zac Goldsmith, Richmond MP, Urges Cameron To 'Get Off The Fence'

2012-09-05T03:19:35-04:00

David Laws: The New Education Minister Hardly Anyone Wants Back

2012-09-05T01:53:35-04:00

For some reason the return of David Laws is viewed as some kind of panacea, someone who'll save the coalition from both itself and the sense of drift that's become a hallmark of government so far in 2012. Yet surprisingly few MPs - Lib Dem or Tories - actually feel this way.

Last night the Parliamentary Lib Dem party gathered for a back-to-school supper. The sense among them as the reshuffle sank in was that they'd been corralled by the Tories, cattle-prodded around Whitehall at the whim of David Cameron. That's how reshuffles always feel, of course. But for a small party unused to government there was a sense of being manhandled and vulnerable, particularly given the ascendancy of the right on the Tory side of this reshuffle.

Still, they've got one of their big hitters back in government, right at the heart of the action in both the Education department and the Cabinet Office. That's got to be a consolation prize, right?

Far from it. Many Lib Dem MPs view Laws' supposed rehabilitation as only further cause for depression and panic. They think it makes things even worse.

And they're right. BSkyB takeovers and GP clinical commissioning groups seem myopic to large sections of the public - not because they're too thick to understand them, but because they don't exist on a tangible human scale. Theft, on the other hand, is easy to grasp because it's happened to most people at some point. People believe David Laws stole, and the prevailing sense is that he wasn't sufficiently punished for that.

Now he's back in government, and quite a few Lib Dems with precarious majorities (that's a lot of them) worry that Laws' inevitable profile in the media will hamper their electoral chances, not enhance them. Were any Lib Dem MPs glad to see David Laws back in government, I asked? "Just one, Nick Clegg," replied one MP.

It's not just that Laws is so far to the right of his party he's considered a Tory in all but name. When you factor in Chris Huhne's forthcoming trial for allegedly perverting the course of justice, some MPs feel the challenge facing Lib Dems to restore their happy-clappy brand just got an awful lot harder.

On the Tory side the return of Laws - and the reshuffle as a whole - was greeted with a collective shrug. They're happy that Chris Grayling's been promoted and glad that Patrick McLoughlin will be more visible. Many are baffled by the ascendancy of Theresa Villiers and the embracing of everyone's favourite GP Daniel Poulter.

Certainly some backbench Tories were bemused at the new make-up of the Education ministerial team, not just because Michael Gove has lost Sarah Teather, a Lib Dem who he actually liked working with, but also because he's now got Liz Truss to deal with.

"She'll give Gove hell," one Tory MP said, and it's certainly true that on the backbenches Liz Truss has badgered and hectored Gove. In our interview with the Norfolk MP earlier this year she acknowledged that she's been "bolshy" in her dealings with ministers. Many would like to be a fly on the wall inside the Education department now she's got control of early years intervention - she'll probably have toddlers doing quadratic equations within weeks.

The view is that Gove now has the ministerial team from hell to deal with, at a time when he's about to attempt root-and-branch reform to the GCSE system. Gove now has a powerful Lib Dem minister to challenge him in the form of David Laws and a truculent whippersnaper in the form of Liz Truss nipping at his heels. Welcome to the brave new world of Coaliton 2.0.

Nick Clegg Formally Buries Lords Reform And Cuts A Lonely Figure As His MPs Fall Silent

2012-09-03T11:25:29-04:00

"I would like to make a statement on House of Lords reform," announced Nick Clegg to the Commons on Monday afternoon. "Or what's left of it," he added, quite gamely.

Clegg was lighthearted, joking along with MPs who shouted "1911" when he offered a run-down on recent developments on Lords reform.

But the Lib Dem leader was here to do something fairly painful - formally notify the Commons that Lords reforms had died a painful death over the summer, and on the first day back from recess the Bill was formally being withdrawn.

Tory backbenchers present, many of whom had played their part in torpedoing the legislation by voting against it in July, couldn't resist a cheer.

Lib Dem ministers packed out the front benches. Tory MP Mark Harper sat loyally next to Clegg, reminding everyone that he'd been such a trooper and will probably be rewarded with higher office in the reshuffle. The only other Tory present was Sir George Young, probably serving his final day in his job of the Leader of the House.

"The government courted compromise at every turn'" said Clegg briskly, saying it was unfortunate the Bill "cannot be kept on track" because it would unreasonably drag out debates.

"How will we fill the gap in the legislative timetable?" Clegg wondered out loud, presumably anyone able to tune into a TV was waiting with baited breath for the answer. "We will bring forward measures to promote growth," he offered, clearly having forgotten that Andrew Marr's sofa is now the right and proper place for that sort of thing.

Clegg decided not to mention boundary changes in his remarks but really the Lib Dems voting them down at some point was first on everyone else's minds. As Clegg made clear over the summer, the Tories' refusal to allow Lords reform will mean the changes to Commons seats envisaged by David Cameron will now be blocked - making it exceptionally hard for the Tories to win a majority next time.

Responding for Labour Harriet Harman, impressively deadpan, told Clegg: "We share his disappointment." Tories jeered.

"We cannot have an unelected chamber making decisions on the law of the land," Harman went on. "We should have been able to make progress." She neglected to mention that it was her own leader Ed Miliband who frustrated that progress, but pointed out it was a waste of time for the Boundary Commission to continue its work if Clegg was going to effectively veto their planned changes.

Harman urged Clegg to tell the Boundary Commission to put down their pens and calculators and do something else. "We assure him of our support for that," she said, to Tory laughs.

Clegg accused Harman of "spectacular insincerity" and said Labour should be ashamed of themselves, but the Lib Dem leader found himself strangely alone, with his own backbench MPs curiously unwilling to help him out and jeer along at the other side.

But asked repeatedly whether there was anything Cameron could offer Clegg to make him soften his stance on boundary changes, Clegg insisted: "They should not and indeed will not go ahead. Nothing will change my mind on that."

Unfortunately Clegg admitted that he was powerless to stop the Boundary Commission from beavering away, drawing up constituency boundaries which he and Lib Dems would then shoot down in flames. Never mind, it'll only waste a few tens of millions of pounds, what's to worry about?

David Davis Says Osborne's Growth Record Is 'Terrible' And 'Disastrous'

2012-09-03T09:14:28-04:00

Senior Tory MP David Davis has launched a not-so-coded attack on George Osborne's growth strategy, saying that the UK was at the "eleventh hour" in terms of avoiding decades of economic stagnation and unemployment.

Davis, who stood against David Cameron in the 2005 Conservative Party leadership election, told an audience in the City of London that growth prospects looked poor. "Quite simply we are bumping along the bottom," he said, saying recent GDP figures were "terrible" and "disastrous for our growth strategy."

Davis was speaking at an event organised by the Thatcherite think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies, where he took a swipe at George Osborne for blaming the lack of growth on the previous government and he Eurozone. "He is right to point those out, but an alibi is not a policy," he suggested. "To understand should not be to excuse."

"If we do not take coherent and radical approach to galvasinising our economy, there is a serious risk we face a decade in the doldrums," said Davis, drawing parallels between the UK's current economic climate and that seen in the late 1970s.

He urged the coalition to pursue a "shock therapy" for the economy similar to the one deployed by the Thatcher government in the early 1980s.

His call - hours ahead of a Cabinet reshuffle - came on the first day of the new political term at Westminster, which over the next few weeks will see party conference season and the annual Autumn Statement by the Chancellor.

That statement is likely to be highly uncomfortable for the government, and will include admissions that growth and deficit reduction forecasts are wildly off-course. On Sunday George Osborne announced up to £50bn in stimulus projects for housebuilding and a relaxation of planning regulations, but Davis said the more spending would only serve as a "palliative" remedy - the real changes needed to be on tax policy and abandoning new green carbon levies due to hit businesses and energy firms in April next year.

"Inaction could deliver decades of decline and disappointment to a whole new generation," Davis claimed, criticising both calls for infrastructure investment projects like High Speed 2 and recent arguments from Nick Clegg for more taxes on the rich.

"You can either punish the rich or you can harness the rich," he said. "Punishing the rich is economically profitable but almost always economically disastrous.

"The government needs a coherent long term strategy for genuinely lower flatter taxes. That programme would take ten years to deliver, so we should start now and get on with it.

Davis refused to say whether or not he agreed with calls for a third runway to be built at Heathrow Airport, saying he would "leave that to Boris". But in a cryptic manner which will be be seen as an attack on the senior Tory MP Tim Yeo, Davis said infrastructure spending using borrowed money was almost always a bad idea, "sometimes promoted by businessmen with vested interests of their own."

Tim Yeo, the chairman of the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, raised eyebrows by urging David Cameron to prove whether he was a "man or a mouse" and come out in support of a new runway at Heathrow. But Yeo has been accused of standing to gain from an expanded Heathrow because of his private business interests.

In his speech Davis did not call for George Osborne to be replaced in the Cabinet reshuffle widely expected on Tuesday morning. But he warned the Chancellor that time was short if he were to change course, arguing that there was "just about" enough will among voters to accept the last government was to blame for the slump.

"I believe the electorate will decide, as it did with Margaret Thatcher, that the government was simply administering the treatment for the sins of the government before," he concluded.

Gordon Brown: It's Unfair For Only English Students To Pay Tuition Fees For Degrees In Scotland

2012-08-24T13:01:38-04:00

Gordon Brown has suggested it is unfair for students from England paying tuition fees to study in Scotland while Scots and EU nationals get the same education free.

"There are hard truths we in Scotland have got to face up to," he said. "I don't believe it's right, personally, that we believe in social justice, and yet we have tuition fees free to Scotland to Scottish students, free to anyone from the west of the European Union, and we charge someone who comes from England.

"I think that will increasingly become a difficulty, because tuition fees have gone up a lot," he said.

"I'm not saying there's an easy solution to it, but there should be a negotiation about it. It seems to me not in tune with the principles I support, of social justice," he added.

Tuition fees were first introduced across the UK by New Labour in 1998 when Gordon Brown was chancellor, following recommendations in the Dearing report, which had been commissioned by the previous government. Following devolution Scotland moved towards an endowment system in 2000 before abolishing the fees altogether after the SNP formed a minority government in 2007.

Brown made the comments during a lecture to a public meeting of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh on Friday evening, during which he also warned that Scottish independence would create a "race to the bottom" in public services, with England and Scotland trying to undercut each other's tax and spending policies.

The former Labour prime minister warned that the two countries would end up cutting corporation tax to seem more attractive to businesses, and that public spending would suffer as a result.

"The argument goes that we could have separate rates of corporation tax. It sounds quite an attractive argument, doesn't it? Companies could choose which country to go to, but they're paying different rates of corporation tax and the cheaper rate would be attractive to one set of companies, which would move out of one country and into another.

"It's what Ireland did famously and which was hailed for a time as a success. But the Irish corporation tax cut was funded by money from the European Community," he said.

"But if you have less money in the country with the lower corporation tax rate, you then have less public services as a result."

"It may seem superficially attractive but I would say it is against the history of social justice," he concluded.

Brown spoke for an hour at Holyrood on themes of social justice, suggesting that the Scots were "internationalists" who had contributed to social justice across the UK, pointing out that many union leaders were Scottish. He said that the pooling together of resources was central to the Scottish notion of social justice, and that this lent itself to the UK staying together.

"I think there is a danger that the referendum debate becomes about process and procedure, and not about principles," he said.

"There is a danger that we get into a Westminster or Holyrood mentality of talking about the minutiae of detail about running the referendum

“The more fundamental issue is what is in the people of Scotland's interest?" he concluded.

The Scottish independence referendum is almost certain to take place in the autumn of 2014, after David Cameron in effect abandoned his campaign for it to be held sooner. London and Edinburgh remain divided over the structure of the referendum and on whether it should consist of a straight yes/no question to independence. The SNP government is pushing for a third option of greater devolution, often branded Devomax, to be put on the ballot paper.

But Alex Salmond's plans suffered a major setback earlier this week when legal experts concluded that only London had the power to call a referendum and set the question. A separate report by MPs suggested having three possible answers on the ballot paper would be confusing and risked jeopardising the validity of the outcome of the referendum.

Responding to Brown's comments on tuition fees the SNP said in a statement: "Mr Brown’s attack on the Scottish Government’s policy of maintaining free education for Scottish students was simply bizarre. Thanks to having effective independence over universities policy in the Scottish Parliament, the SNP has delivered a policy based on ability to learn, not ability to pay – and our student numbers are going up in Scotland, while they are plunging in England due to Tory cuts.

"Yet it sounds a though Mr Brown wants our universities to be controlled by Westminster, instead of being a Holyrood responsibility."