Quote Writing in his 2010 autobiography A Journey, Mr Blair wrote: ‘We had come to power in 1997 saying it was “standards not structures” that mattered.
‘This was fine as a piece of rhetoric; and positively beneficial as a piece of politics. Unfortunately, as I began to realise when experience started to shape our thinking, it was bunkum as a piece of policy. The whole point is that structures beget standards. How service is configured affects outcomes.’'"
So it seems that this exceedingly simple point, obvious to the point of being banal, nevertheless did not occur to either our Prime Minister, or any of his team, when they were discussing it and putting it in their manifesto. Fook me.