We are all suspects now.

David Willetts writes in the Telegraph: Our university revolution has only just begun:

Despite some dire warnings about the Coalition’s student finance reforms, we’ve already had more applications to university than in any year under the previous government. Once the decline in the total number of 18 year olds has been accounted for, their application rate is down only 1 per cent on last year, when a record number of people applied to get in. We’ve sent recent graduates into 2,000 schools and colleges to explain that maintenance grants are being increased and monthly repayments after graduation are being reduced.

I recommend the whole article. We previously commented on the funding reforms here.

From the Conservative Poster Archive, poster 1929-31, “Socialism would mean inspectors all round”.

Conservative Poster 1929-31

Too true, unfortunately: see Harry Snook’s Crossing the Threshold - 266 ways the State can enter your home from the Centre for Policy Studies (PDF) and my related question in debate.

We’ve faced a good deal of opposition in the last year and a half. And I am certain 2012 will be no different. Because one thing I’ve come to realise during my time as Education Secretary is that the opposition we face is of a very particular kind…

It’s ironic, if you think about it. The popular critique of our reform programme has most often been of its underpinning motives. The talk was of an ‘ideologically-driven Academies programme’ and ‘ideologically-motivated school reforms.’ We’re supposed to be the ideologues. And yet…

And yet the truth is rather different. The Academies programme is not about ideology. It’s an evidence-based, practical solution built on by successive governments – both Labour and Conservative. The new ideologues are the enemies of reform, the ones who put doctrine ahead of pupils’ interests. Every step of the way, they have sought to discredit our policies, calling them divisive, destructive, ineffective, unpopular, unworkable – even ‘a crime against humanity.’

But the facts on the ground tell a very different story.

Read more: Michael Gove: Who are the ideologues now?

Great stuff from Mike Weatherley MP:

Via David Cameron’s speech in full – Telegraph, a biting attack on the liberal left:

Oh yes, I do understand. Believe me I do understand and I am disgusted by the idea that we should aim for any less for a child from a poor background than a rich one. I have contempt for the notion that we should accept narrower horizons for a black child than a white one. Yes it’s the age-old irony of the liberal left: they practice oppression and call it equality.

I recommend the full speech.

At conference fringe meetings, I spoke against HS2, as I expect to do on Thursday in the Commons, in support of planning reform with a right to refuse and on the subject of how the Big Society idea can help fight poverty. Please see my Twitter feed for more.