Jane Hutt is really a walking, talking copy of The Guardian, writes Clive Betts from the Assembly press gallery.
The education minister believes in every jot and tittle of a political manifesto that would send that paper’s readers into raptures. And everyone else to sleep.
Perhaps, indeed, the education field she oversees is excessively jargon-prone.
But the education minister’s talk of United Nations rights certainly takes into the world of theory rather than practice.
All exceedingly worthy. Which fits perfectly with the personality of the AM for Vale of Glamorgan.
One of her issues yesterday was the launch of the little Assembly booklet We Are On the Way – a policy agenda to transform the lives of disabled youngsters.
To which Ms Hutt added the anti-bullying strategies that the Assembly is pushing within schools
Plus the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
And don’t forget free school breakfasts, which have now extended to so many schools after a long period when several of the Assembly’s political parties were opposed in principle.
Whenever you think about Ms Hutt’s lack of charisma, just ponder awhile about what would happen were the Tories to have to deal with such issues. And that’s not impossible after the next Assembly election.
Ms Hutt rabbited on about the importance of schools councils in which pupils have a voice. “Young people are recognising that they have rights,” she told us
When they grow up, such youngsters will prove better than their elders, she said. When it comes to politics and the Assembly, they put their parents to shame …
Better than their elders . . ? Might we learn the truth (or otherwise) of that point in the next Welsh election in the Vale of Glamorgan ?
Ms Hutt, aged 60 on December 15, intends to stand for another term. But with a majority of only 83 in a seat which has often been Tory held, Ms Hutt would seem to be looking forward to enforced early retirement.
Presumably at the hands of a youngster who know more about the Assembly than his or her parents.
There’s nothing quite like a minister teaching herself out of a job.
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