Mr Balls and a new class war

Speaking to the Association of School and College Leaders, Mr Balls demanded that schools in affluent areas to do more for poorer pupils — without saying exactly what.

He also triggered a row over exams, dismissing the concerns of private schools who are opting for the tougher international GCSE, rather than what they see as the dumbed-down UK version, as a "marketing strategy".

On the exams, Mr Balls is simply unconvincing: the concerns of schools switching to the IGCSE are echoed across the spectrum of schools and employers too. Meanwhile his message on pupils from poorer backgrounds simply risks stoking resentment in successful schools.

ASCL chief John Dunford accused him of threatening schools with a "juggernaut of policies, laws and regulations".

Mr Balls is right to highlight the gulf between attainment between pupils of different backgrounds, a gap visible in the widely varying results obtained by schools in richer and poorer areas of London. The problem is that he appears to have few specific solutions: today's speech was very thin on detail. The impression he gives is thus of attacking successful schools and middle-class parents in order to further the Government's social goals, without offering much in the way of positive alternatives — a similar pattern to his meddling in school admissions policies.

Mr Balls will make scant progress in raising attainment until he makes clear where he really stands on what is nominally still the Government's flagship schools policy, the expansion of city academies. He has been distinctly lukewarm about them in the past.

If he has a serious alternative, many London parents would like to hear it. But hectoring heads and bashing private schools will not make much practical difference to anything — except, perhaps, this potential Labour leader's popularity on the backbenches.

Mr Hate

This paper's interview today with Anjem Choudary, the controversial Islamist leader, will anger and shock many readers. In it he compares British troops to Nazis and calls for Sharia law in the UK, including death by stoning for adultery and compulsory ­burkas for all women.

Worse, Choudary is funded by the taxpayer, since he lives off state benefits. Yet those who will feel angriest on reading Choudary's ravings may be his fellow Muslims, the vast majority of whom are moderate and baffled by the ascendance of such firebrands.

It is Muslims' communities and religious practices on whom men like Choudary have the greatest impact. His misogynist fantasies about burkas are, in practical terms, an irrelevance to non-Muslims, but such conservatism can exert a pull over moderate Muslim communities and accepted norms of behaviour.

It is their sons who are radicalised by such extremists and their mosques which are taken over. It is their religion that is being hijacked.

For Choudary and his ilk represent only the most extreme strand of one conservative and backward Sunni Muslim sect, Saudi Wahhabism — not the Muslim mainstream or anything close to it.

All of us, however, should take pride that bigots like Choudary are free to say the things they do. For even as he turns on his native country, he cannot destroy its democracy or its values — freedoms cherished by the vast majority of his fellow British Muslims.

Holes in the road

Holes in London's roads made by utility and cable companies remain one of the most enraging features of the capital's streetscape, snarling up traffic again and again. So the Mayor's new system of permits is promising: it should stop companies being able to dig up streets so easily. This paper is wary of forcing extra bureaucracy on businesses. But in our streets, red tape is better than orange cones.