Something you don’t often hear: a shadow minister agreeing wholeheartedly with his Government counterpart. However, that’s exactly what happened last week when Labour’s shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg said Michael Gove’s new proposals to make foreign language learning from the age of seven compulsory were “absolutely right”.

A brief digression at this point, if you’ll indulge me. I admit I’m not much of a political animal, but after hearing of this shock concurrence, I did spend a little while daydreaming about read more