The announcement by the prime minister that his special adviser on education, Andrew Adonis, is to receive a peerage and a ministerial post at the DfES has been greeted with dismay by many. But is it such a bad thing?
It is another brazen example of prime ministerial patronage. It comes after Mr Blair's contrite speech on re-election, when he announced that he had spent four weeks listening and learning - after only eight years in office.
Adonis has little background in education and it is unclear why or how he became such a pivotal figure in the development of educational policy. We know that he was close to Roy Jenkins. He was a governor of an Islington school that was enveloped in controversy about the appointment and then abrupt resignation of a 'super-head' because of concerns about standards. And we know the policies he has been instrumental in creating - notably top-up fees and the City Academy programme.
What we don't know is where his thinking will take the education system, although he will continue to undermine the role of local education authorities.
But are there any pluses in his appointment? Yes.
We don't know what his salary was as an adviser, or the terms of his employment. He rarely gave interviews or made speeches. He was, like others in Number 10, completely unaccountable.
But now all that has changed. He will be accountable, and despite the secrecy that hangs over the development of Government policy he can be regularly asked to answer questions in public - something he has never had to do before.
This appointment will bring some transparency to educational policy development, even if the policies are contentious. So perhaps this appointment represents a political blunder - not because it is controversial ,but because it lifts the coat-tails on Blair's policymaking process.
