Blunkett bemoans yet another of his failings - to kill off grammar schools

You’d think that David Blunkett would have enough regrets to be getting on with: two messy resignations from the cabinet, a doomed affair with another man’s wife, not to mention indiscreet criticism of his cabinet colleagues.

Yet now he also regrets not doing more as education secretary to get rid of grammar schools. “I have regrets that we made the hurdle as high as we did for parents seeking a ballot to legitimise the removal of the 11-plus,” he says in an interview on YouTube.

Labour has every reason to rue the 11-plus. If John Prescott hadn’t been trying to make up for failing it, would he have risen quite as far?

Prescott's face earns him a public hanging

Painters have occasionally suffered for their art, but few can have suffered more than James Wright, who will shortly unveil a portrait of John Prescott. Wright was inspired, if that’s quite the word, by an image of the deputy prime minister and love machine apparently nodding off in the Commons. And he was unable to get this picture out of his head for two gruelling years.

The resulting work is the centrepiece of an exhibition of modern portraits at the Ashwin Street gallery in east London. “He’s visually a very interesting character,” says Wright of his subject, who is famed for his enigmatic scowl.