John Healey: frontbench veteran uniquely equipped to ready Labour for office

John Healey: ‘If we go into government, the one thing we’ve got to remember is to remain political.’ Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

Within his first few days as a junior education minister in Tony Blair’s government, officials reassured John Healey that a New Labour scheme to fund adult education through “individual learning accounts” was a “roar-away success”.

“Don’t worry about them – in fact, you know, we’ve exceeded our targets by about five or six times already,” he recalls a civil servant reporting to him. Within two months, it was evident the taxpayer was being defrauded of tens of millions of pounds.