Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. When Tony Blair announced that his three areas of focus were “education, education, education”, John Major joked that he had the same priorities but not necessarily in the same order. Such is the current appetite for copycat policy that, on school reform, it may soon become difficult to slip an Ofqual disclaimer between the Conservatives and Labour.

When Michael Gove and Nick Clegg yesterday announced that GCSEs would be replaced by a new English Baccalaureate, to be phased in from 2015, Labour mustered some anger and warned of a return to a two-tier system. But on broader structural changes in schools, the mantra for both parties appears to be: emulation, emulation, emulation.

As Andrew Adonis notes in his new book, Mr Gove once “praised Blair and Blairites to the skies”. In office, the Education Secretary has translated that admiration into a roll-out of the academies that Lord Adonis, as Mr Blair’s adviser and later as his schools minister, pioneered. That project, resisted by some colleagues and civil servants, left him derided from the Left flank of education as Andrew Bloody Adonis (ABA for short) and Lord Barmy of Bedlam.

Even residual critics of Lord Adonis, a Cypriot postman’s son who was brought up in a care home and worked his way to Oxford, must quail at the failure he outlines in Education, Education, Education. With the typical 16 year-old in the Nineties leaving school with two or three GCSEs that probably did not include English and Maths, Lord Adonis set himself the task of achieving a “90 per cent education system”, under which at least nine in 10 pupils achieved a basic standard.

The aim was to close the “secondary modern comprehensives” that blighted children’s lives, open a wave of academies, get the brightest candidates into teaching and introduce proper vocational education and an academic and technical baccalaureate. That programme remains his goal today. The difference is that Lord Adonis, even in his ministerial incarnation, was viewed by many in his party as a dangerous irritant.