Mr Miliband has few more influential allies than Mr Hunt, who is already tipped as a future leader, or Miss Reeves, seen by many in the party as a potential chancellor. But while their interventions reflect Mr Miliband’s “passion” for an education revolution, the test of his resolve is yet to come. T S Eliot called education “the means we must employ for putting civilisation together again”. He did not add that it was an easy way to cut the welfare bill. If Labour wants to save on benefits, it must also devise and fund an education system that paves the road to human progress.