Not quite good enough: why did Estelle really flunk on Education?

Her body language spoke volumes of the pressure of high office, she was uncomfortable about press intrusions into her private life and she didn't see eye to eye with Blair's man at No 10. But did Estelle Morris really have to be so hard on herself? Andy McSmith on the perplexing death of a career

Nothing livens up the dull life of an opposition MP like seeing a minister being caught out and forced to resign. On the face of it, Estelle Morris's sudden departure last week was a direct hit for the Conservative Party and its shadow education secretary, Damian Green.

On Monday afternoon, Mr Green revealed that Tory researchers had uncovered something said by Ms Morris in 1999 which contradicted evidence she gave more recently to a select committee.

It was a detail, interesting to political obsessives, but meaningless to everyone else – but it was a cataclysm for Ms Morris. That same evening, she turned down an offer to appear on Tuesday morning's edition of Radio 4's Today, and at midday the following day, she called in at No 10 Downing Street to tell an astonished Prime Minister that she wanted to quit.

Yet the atmosphere was curiously subdued when MPs met on Thursday morning for Education Questions, minus the former Education Secretary. Her replacement, Charles Clarke, sat on the front bench, a large brooding presence, saying nothing. From the Tory side, there were none of the hoots of delight which followed the fall of other ministers, such as Stephen Byers. Mention of Ms Morris provoked only a few muted jeers from backbench Tories.

Within a day or so of her extraordinary resignation, the opinion in Westminster was that there was no hidden story behind it. Mr Green, who appeared to be the author of Ms Morris's downfall, has even joined in the tributes. He told The Independent on Sunday: "Her resignation was well judged. She is a decent and straightforward human being. We all feel a degree of personal sympathy for her, but if the policies go horribly wrong, the minister has to take responsibility."

Since early September, the minister had been beset by a series of crises, when thousands of children missed the start of term because of a fault in the system for vetting new teachers, when she involved herself in the case of two schoolboys expelled for threatening a teacher, and – most seriously – when the A-level results descended into a fiasco.

These crises, aggravated by press intrusion into her private life, had allegedly convinced her that she was not up to the job, and out she went. One obvious flaw in this version of events is that it is contradicted by Ms Morris herself, in the interview she gave to the BBC, inside No 10, before her resignation had become public knowledge. Ms Morris had personally insisted that the interview be conducted by an education correspondent, Sue Littlemore, rather than the BBC's political editor, Andrew Marr. It will be remembered for the harsh verdict she delivered on herself: "I judge my own performance as not being quite good enough." Yet even in this self-flagellating mood, Ms Morris gave herself a pretty good pass mark as the minister for schools.

"I know what my strengths are. I know about schools. I know about delivery," she said. But when you are Secretary of State, she added, "You have to balance not only schools – which I love – but other parts of the portfolio as well."

The hint was about as clear as it could be that she thought she had failed somewhere else in the education system, not in the running of schools.

Part of what she judged to be her own failure must have been the breakdown of her relationship with Tony Blair's chief policy adviser, Andrew Adonis. Though unknown to the public, Mr Adonis is a substantial figure in Whitehall, a former journalist who was Tony Blair's principal adviser on education before the last election, then was promoted to head the Downing Street Policy Unit after his predecessor, David Miliband, was elected to Parliament.

Mr Adonis is also adamantly in favour of making students pay top-up fees as a means of bringing in extra money to universities. The idea cannot be put into practice in the next three years, because it runs counter to a promise in last year's Labour election manifesto, but could be part of Labour's programme for a third term in office. Whoever is Education Secretary at the next general election will have to be prepared to explain such a drastic policy U-turn.

That was not a task that appealed to Ms Morris, who was as vehement in her opposition to top-up fees as Mr Adonis is enthusiastic in his support. Their relations became so bad that she objected to his attendance at meetings where higher education was on the agenda.

It is not certain that she told the Prime Minister, when she saw him on Tuesday, this was the final straw that drove her to resign. Mr Blair anyway had to go for another appointment, and left her with his senior advisers, Alastair Campbell and Sally Morgan, hoping that they could persuade her to stay.

She told them that now the Tories had revealed that she had misled a Commons select committee, she could not simply brazen it out in the House.

This was embarrassing – but a resigning matter? It was obvious to them that she had not deliberately lied.

Ms Morris also complained that relatives and old friends were paying a price for her public role. Her sister had rung her up in distress because The Sunday Times was asking questions about her job as a teacher in a private school.

Ms Morris's father, uncle and other relatives had been contacted by a journalist from the London Evening Standard, who was writing a profile of the minister, and asking why Ms Morris had not married. Another journalist had spoken to former colleagues at a secondary school in Coventry.

Though Ms Morris may have found this upsetting, other cabinet ministers have fared far worse and have carried on. Ms Morris's relatives are anyway more politically experienced than most. Her father, Charles Morris, was a Labour MP and a minister in the 1970s. So was her uncle Alf, now Lord Morris of Manchester. One member of the Morris family said: "We were wary, and informed Estelle that we had been contacted, but nothing ever came of it, and I really don't think it was a massive intrusion. It's just something that came on top of everything else."

Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's hard-nosed director of communications, is reported to have taken much the same attitude. He apparently told Ms Morris that this was standard stuff for a cabinet minister, and she should learn to live with it. That meeting on Tuesday ended with Ms Morris being persuaded to sleep on her decision. But the next day after a speech in Birmingham to 300 secondary school heads, she went to Downing Street to insist that her decision stood.

The only substantial announcement that her successor Charles Clarke made on his first day was that he had an open mind on the subject of top-up fees.

After eight weeks of constant crisis, it seems that Miss Morris's nerves were shredded. She did not want to put in a position where she had to defend in public ideas with which she profoundly disagreed in private. Neither did she feel strong enough to defy Downing Street. The only other option was to quit.

For the Blairite radicals in Downing Street, it was a victory of a sort, but a costly one.

Crisis countdown

4 September: Nearly 8,000 teachers cannot start work because they are still waiting to be vetted.

17 September: 17,500 queries have been lodged with examination boards about A-level and AS-level results.

18 September: Morris orders the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA examinations board to re-mark its A-level papers.

19 September: Mike Tomlinson appointed to head an inquiry into A-level grades.

27 September: Sir William Stubbs sacked by Morris as chairman of Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

11 October: Morris accused by Surrey County Council of being "unhelpful" in case of two expelled teenagers.

15 October: Tomlinson inquiry concludes that 1,220 A-level and 733 AS-level students should have their results regraded.

21 October: Tories produce evidence that Morris had misled a Commons committee over whether she had promised to resign if literacy targets were not met.

23 October: Morris resigns.