Last week, it was Mr Knight who had to defend the Government's mishandling of the Sats fiasco. There was barely a murmur from his boss, Ed Balls, the Normanton MP. It was the same this week with A-levels. And it probably will be the same when the GCSE results are released – provided that they have been marked on time.

To be fair to Balls, he's not the first Secretary of State to command a low-profile at exam time. Nor is he likely to be the last. But what is, perhaps, disappointing is his seeming reluctance to debate the whole issue of school standards with his opponents. Is he worried about losing the argument – or is he pre-occupied with trying to watch the back of his boss and mentor, one Gordon Brown? For, if that is the case, Balls should be moved to a more central role at the earliest opportunity.

The skills crisis is so acute that the country requires a full-time Education Secretary rather than a part-time individual who barks 3,840 pages of new orders for schools in between endless meetings determining this Government's future.



GORDON Brown is not the only party leader who is going to have to produce the speech of his life at next month's party conference. The same is true of Lib Dem supremo Nick Clegg, the Sheffield Hallam MP.

Clegg can be thankful that his shortcomings – and his party's poor performance in recent elections – have been masked to a certain extent by Calamity Brown's performance.

But Lib Dem activists are becoming restless. A recent poll showed Clegg to be his party's fourth most effective performer behind Treasury spokesman Vince Cable, leadership rival Chris Huhne and public information campaigner Norman Baker. He only narrowly beat Lynne Featherstone who evidently speaks on youth and equality.

This does not bode well.



ASPIRING Prime Minister David Miliband would be wise to take heed of the counsel proffered by William Hague on the art of leadership.

The Richmond MP tried to improve his image after his election as Tory leader by wearing a baseball cap – and boasting about his drinking prowess. It was an unmitigated disaster.

Now Miliband is trying to redefine his own profile as he senses Gordon Brown's demise; hence pictures of the Foreign Secretary buying a pint of milk to prove that he is an ordinary man and not a geek. Miliband should be careful. As Hague said this week: "I must have a word with him and give him some advice – don't try to be normal when you aren't."

There speaks a man with the hindsight of experience.



ON the subject of William Hague, his wife Ffion's biography, The Pain and the Privilege: The Women in Lloyd George's life, tops the holiday reading of MPs. It also tops a semi-compulsory summer reading list drawn up by one Tory official for candidates.

But Judy Hurd, whose husband, Douglas – Lord Hurd – was an international statesman of some repute, and who is now writing a
book on great foreign secretaries, has her doubts.

She says: "The philandering Welshman is surely not the ideal
role model for today's would-be minister."



I'M lucky. I have a NHS dentist – even though his practice is a 12-mile drive across Leeds, and I might be struck off its register if I do not attend six-monthly check-ups.

But what particularly perturbs me is the overtly-bureaucratic manner that governs dentistry. The Government has made funds available for 80 million treatments next year, though I'm not quite sure how this figure
was calculated.

It is then up to local Primary Care Trusts to allocate treatment quotas to individual practices. But, because of the botched nature of the Government's changes, a shortage of dentists means that some 3.7 million treatments have not been allocated for next year.

What a shambles. There was a time when one could simply register at one's local dentist. Now the system is a lottery.

AN acquaintance provides further evidence of the "world gone mad" culture that now appears endemic throughout Britain – and, in particular, local government.

Doing her bit for the environment, she drove to her local tip, which
just happens to be in outer Leeds, only to be greeted by a sign saying that the recycling site could be used only by people living in the district.

Why? She lives in a Bradford postcode area and, therefore,
should have taken her rubbish to a waste-disposal site in that postcode area, even if it meant a more inconvenient journey that could
not be combined with the supermarket run.

There was poor me thinking it was the job of councils to encourage recycling. Obviously not.



WHO does Sir Richard Branson think he is, writing to the two US Presidential candidates and imploring them to block the new tie-up between British Airways and American Airlines because it would leave consumers worse off?

It's a bit rich coming from Branson when my experience of his company's handling of complaints – particularly over rail services and faulty internet connections – has been lamentable at best.

Perhaps he'd be better off getting his own Virgin empire in order first.


OLD Socialist habits die hard. Asked what he missed most about no longer being Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott gave a one-word answer: "Croquet."