Conservatives “running scared” on schools policy

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

Below is a copy of the letter sent by Ed Balls to Michael Gove this afternoon, after the shadow schools minister seemingly refused to share a platform to debate education policy with Balls on the Daily Politics Show today.

Click here to enlarge the image.

Balls told Jon Sopel on the show:

“Look John, I don’t know, I’m trying to talk about the big issues, about the future of the country, you want to talk trivia, what Alastair Darling was there doing was responding to claims in Andrew Rawnsley’s book; a commentator who now, a few weeks before an election, has now had to write two political columns in The Observer in two consecutive weeks, trying to justify and defend his own book. Let’s get to the big issues, schools, hospitals, the economy, jobs and let’s ask the question, why didn’t David Cameron do the work, why aren’t they ready for this election, why are their policies falling apart, why are the country saying, ‘blimey, they’re a scary prospect’, why are the polls narrowing, those are the big issues we should be debating, that’s what I want to talk about.”

A full transcript of Sopel’s interview with Balls and Gove can be found here and you can watch Sopel saying Gove “didn’t want to debate with Labour” here on iPlayer.