In a 2006 piece for the pressure group Compass, jointly written with Melissa Benn, she set out her vision for comprehensive schools: "The comprehensive ideal remains the most vibrant statement possible of the sort of society many of us want to live in. Many people forget today that the comprehensive principle was founded on the idea of ‘equality of respect' and ‘equal worth'; [. . .] At its best, such a school creates powerful social bonds that contribute to community cohesion and wellbeing."

One of the reasons Millar is so fired up about Michael Gove's education reforms is because she sees him as a right-wing version of herself. She dismisses his talk of granting taxpayer-funded schools more freedom and removing the dead hand of local authorities as just so much rhetoric. In reality, she believes he is intent on wresting control of public education from the Left so he can turn it over to the Right. He wants to "privatise" state education not just to enrich his friends like Rupert Murdoch, but so that the profiteering buccaneers he puts in charge of state schools can promote their own, free-market philosophy. It's a zero-sum game, a battle to the death between two sides in an ideological war.

It's this blinkeredness that makes Millar such a friend of reformers like me. Her whole personality seems to embody everything that's unattractive about a top-down, state-controlled education system in which politics takes precedence over children's welfare. After our first appearance on Newsnight, I was surprised by how many people got in touch to express sympathy. The standard response was: "Until now, I hadn't realised what you were up against." It turns out Millar is a brilliant campaigner after all — not for her own cause, but for that of her opponents. Which may help explain why she's been on the losing side of every major policy debate in education for at least 15 years.

Thanks, in part, to Fiona Millar, more than half of England's state secondary schools are now academies and the free schools movement is gaining momentum every day. Which is why I say, more power to her elbow. Keep on doing what you're doing, Fiona. There is no better advertisement for the cause of education reform.