MIRED in mid-term malaise, the government can summon at least two consolations from its education reforms. The mission to increase variety among state schools by allowing them to run themselves as “academies” or newly created “free schools” has fared better than any of the coalition's other vaunted changes to the public services. Half of all secondary schools in England are now, or are soon to be, academies. Michael Gove, the education secretary, had originally aimed to reach this milestone by 2015.

On top of this is a political windfall. Whereas the Conservatives are fervent for these market-like reforms, and the Liberal Democrats broadly supportive, the Labour Party is conspicuously riven. Some, including Lord Adonis, who helped to pioneer academies under Tony Blair, regard them as a logical extension of the previous Labour government's work. But many on the left—including the trade unions and Ed Balls, the more dirigiste former education secretary who now serves as shadow chancellor—worry about the loss of state control over state-funded schools.

The split is evident in Labour's frontbench education team, which is led by the Blairite Stephen Twigg but also contains the more sceptical Lisa Nandy. In a tortuous television interview on June 10th, Mr Twigg struggled to say whether his party supported the rapid proliferation of the academy model, seeming to suggest that it was right for some failing schools but not generally. He criticised free schools but pledged not to close them down.

The fault belongs less to him than to his party, whose views on education (and much else) remain opaque as it conducts a comprehensive policy review initiated by its leader, Ed Miliband, who himself has sounded unclear on the issue. Labour tends to make much of the few educational causes that unite it, such as opposition to profit-making organisations running schools and academic selection of pupils, neither of which are part of the academy or free-school model.

If the policy review does come down on one side or the other, Mr Miliband will incur internal wrath. In its depth and historical pedigree, Labour's split on education is akin to the Tories' rifts over Europe. An ideological commitment to state-run schools pervades the opposition benches; Mr Blair sometimes relied on Conservative votes to pass legislation loosening the state's grip on education.

Were Labour unambiguously hostile to Mr Gove's reforms, it could at least oppose him coherently. Were the party in favour, it could share in the credit for academies and focus its ire on other aspects of his work—such as his proposed overhaul of the school curriculum, which some find too prescriptive, or his criticism of examination standards. Labour could also lobby for a more generous “pupil premium”, the supplementary funding schools receive for each poor pupil they take.

Instead, Labour MPs are caught in between, slowly ceding ownership of one of their more far-sighted innovations without repudiating it. Conor Ryan, a former education adviser to Mr Blair, laments that the party has allowed academies to be “stolen” by the coalition. The contrast with health care, where Labour's evisceration of the government has been helped by its own unity on the issue, is instructive.