TORY Education Secretary Nicky Morgan gave an extra £124,000 grant to a “free schools” charity run by David Cameron’s former director of strategy in May, on top of the money they get for running their home-made school — even though his record of actually running schools is so far one of failure.

James O’Shaughnessy was Cameron’s aide from 2007-11, and before that George Osborne’s chief strategy adviser from 2001-2007. He is used to big favours from the government — in August Cameron gave O’Shaughnessy a seat in the Lords.

O’Shaughnessy sees himself as an expert in education, and has founded a free school provider called Floreat Education.

Floreat means “let flourish” in Latin, and is frequently used in public school mottoes. Sam Freedman, a former adviser to Michael Gove, is helping run Floreat Education, so this is a real Tory-pals act.

Floreat Education is opening a few free schools in London. However, just the regular extra cash given to free schools is not enough for O’Shaughnessy. In May Morgan awarded Floreat Education that extra £124k grant so they can run a “virtue development programme” which will “build pupils’ character.”

O’Shaughnessy thinks he has a special insight into “building character” that is not found in ordinary schools. He says: “Floreat is taking Aristotle’s ideas about human flourishing and putting them into practice in primary schools. Central to Floreat’s mission is developing pupils’ character virtues so that they have practical wisdom — which Aristotle called phronesis — and are inspired to make the right decisions for the right reasons.”

A free £124k grant from a political friend will make his attempts to instil “virtue” into pupils much easier.

He will certainly need all the help he can get. O’Shaughnessy developed his ideas for “building character” at Wellington College public school. When O’Shaughnessy left Cameron he first became head of group strategy at Wellington College from 2012-2014. He is also a former pupil of Wellington.

The pompous head of Wellington, Anthony Seldon, spent a lot of time going on about how he and his public school knew all about “building character.” But together, O’Shaughnessy and Seldon totally failed to take their special knowledge outside the walls of the privileged public school. O’Shaughnessy’s job was to create a “network of academy schools in the state sector” based on Wellington. The plan failed completely. Ofsted inspectors found Wellington’s one sponsored school, the Wellington Academy, struggled to reach the “requires improvement” level, and all the rest of the “network” failed to materialise.

Following that failure, O’Shaughnessy left to set up Floreat Education. So having been behind one educational failure, O’Shaughnessy is now being given free schools to run, getting an extra £124k grant.

O’Shaughnessy doesn’t just believe in “character.” He also believes that private companies should be able to make profit from running state-funded academy schools, a point he made in a pamphlet for influential Tory-oriented think tank Policy Exchange.

Just to prove how virtuous he is, James O’Shaughnessy is a lobbyist on the side. He has a part-time job as chief policy adviser to lobbyists Portland Communications. For a fee it will help clients with “navigating the intricacies of policy and government.” Portland’s clients include the government of Qatar and BAE systems. They also include McDonalds and Nestle, two firms dedicated to building schoolkids’ “character.”

--------------------------------

THIS week I visited Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI), Britain’s biggest arms fair. It’s an amazing achievement — a full sized weapons bazaar erected minutes away from the centre of London. You can even buy a second- hand helicopter out the back, and they are displaying full-sized battleships for sale.

It is a deeply disturbing event, as most of the finely made goods on display are designed to kill people. It is also, like so much of the “free market,” very heavily backed by our tax money.

The arms marketplace relies on a lot of government support. That support includes turning our armed forces into a sales force whose job is to help repressive foreign governments buy weapons. Each visiting delegation is given a British uniformed officer whose job is to act as a “personal shopper” for Middle Eastern and other buyers.

DSEI, which takes place at the Excel Centre in London’s Docklands, offers two huge halls of stalls offering everything from rifles to robot killer “tanks,” from drones to missiles and beyond.

If you look properly you can see that it is a state-supported market. The government has a department, UK Trade and Industry (UKTI), which helps businesses sell abroad. They have a dedicated arms sales unit, the Defence and Security Organisation (DSO).

The UKTI DSO hosts a huge stall which uses a mock-up of British operations in the deserts of Afghanistan or Iraq to sell rockets, armoured vehicles and the like to visiting delegations.

The DSO used to be more honestly called the Defence Sales Organisation, and was formerly part of the Ministry of Defence (MOD). It was moved to the Trade Ministry to cover up embarrassment over British soldiers being used as salesmen for British firms selling weapons to foreign armies, after this threw up scandals like the “arms to Iraq” affair.

However, this split from the MoD is very cosmetic. At DSEI the UKTI DSO “lounge” is jointly hosted by the MoD. The British government invites over 50 delegations from foreign countries to buy kit at DSEI. These include delegations from repressive Middle Eastern regimes like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

You can see the delegations on the floor of DSEI examining the weapons in the booths — groups of men, sometimes in uniforms, sometimes in suits. Each is accompanied by a British officer from the army, navy or air force. These officers are in smart “no.2 service dress” associated with formal duties. They are “military escort officers,” given by the army to the foreign arms buyers to help them with their visit. They escort them round the halls and to and from their hotels. So while the press has made a big fuss about who sings “patriotic” songs, our armed forces are being used as personal shoppers for foreign dictators on the lookout for deadly weapons.