For a period last week after Beverley Hughes resigned as children's minister and Ed Balls appeared poised to become Chancellor, it looked as if the Every Child Matters project would lose both its principal carers. The impact of such a double whammy could have been disastrous for continuity of policy: a new Secretary of State would have been eager to make their mark with a new children's minister not in a position to hold them in check.
In the event, Balls stayed put as Children's Secretary in a dramatic and ultimately botched Cabinet reshuffle. But Balls remains a key political figure. The policy that comes out of his department will be seen as a crucial passage out of the government's current malaise. The first fightback in policy will come in the shape of the white paper on the 21st-century school.
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