Bridget Phillipson knows Michaela is working – and she can’t stand it

A few MPs have perfected the art of the well-timed parliamentary question. One is Reform’s Rupert Lowe, whose canny inquiries about migration make him a constant irritant to the Home Office. There is is SNP leader Stephen Flynn who, despite his party’s depleted numbers, routinely slices cabinet ministers as if they were haggis.

Another is Suffolk MP Nick Timothy, also a columnist for this newspaper. This week, Timothy asked Bridget Phillipson to praise the head of a top-performing UK state school. A pretty simple task you’d think. Wrong.

Phillipson steamed like a recently boiled kettle and with barely-disguised fury read out an unrelated quote from the 2017 Tory manifesto, co-authored by Timothy. Presumably intended as some sort of “gotcha”, this merely confirmed how rattled she was.

Clearly, the Education Secretary would rather spontaneously combust than utter a word in praise of this school. Why? Perhaps because the headmistress in question is Katharine Birbalsingh, founder of Michaela Community School, which favours traditional teaching methods and a knowledge-rich curriculum. By rights, Left-wingers ought to admire Michaela; a non-selective state secondary located in a deprived area of London which nevertheless outperforms many of the UK’s top fee-paying schools. Instead the very mention of it seems triggering. What better evidence that achievement always comes second to ideology? Ms Phillipson would probably rather lavish praise on Eton.