Leading article: Funding friend

Whether David Eastwood can restore the Higher Education Funding Council's role as a buffer between the Government and the universities remains to be seen. What matters really is that he should effectively represent the sector's interests in his dealings with politicians and the wider world.

There is little question that Eastwood is capable of this. He is smart, realistic, has strong views and is utterly steely beneath the hail-fellow-well-met exterior, according to those who know him. He should therefore be a match for any minister and for those mandarins at the Treasury.