Layla Moran interview: Michael Gove is the worst thing ever to happen to education in the UK

Layla Moran has been an MP for about six months so naturally she thinks it's "ridiculous" that she is already being talked about as the next Lib Dem leader. But 10 years as a maths teacher is enough for her to at least partly understand what lies behind the speculation. "Well, there are only 12 of us [in Parliament] aren't there," she says, laughing. "Not that many to pick from. But I've only been here five minutes. That it is Layla Moran's name and no one else's doing the rounds is because she is articulate, extremely intelligent, easy company, and she absolutely screams Lib Dem. She is young (she's 35), she's a teacher, she's got a constituency full of academics in Oxford West and Abingdon, she has a Palestinian mother and a father who was a diplomat for the EU (she spent Christmas in Brussels, obviously). But what political people know that perhaps the population at large does not is that Lib Dems do not pull their punches, and she doesn't either. She thinks, "Michael Gove was one of the worst things to ever happen to the education system in this country," she says. She thinks, "David Cameron is the worst Prime Minister this country has ever had." Pleasingly, Moran is not a fully combat-trained politician yet. So when I ask her whether she has her eye on the top job, she replies, "You say that like it's a foregone conclusion that anyone would want to be Lib Dem leader." In the recent leadership "election" only one candidate stood, Sir Vince Cable, and he has almost stopped bothering to disguise the fact he wants to retire. Even so, this is still not a view that a political party's rising star is meant to say out loud. Someone should want to do it, but I decided to be an MP for a very specific reason. But there are concrete reasons that large parts of the party faithful are quietly gathering behind the Moran banner. No small cause is her election victory itself. Oxford West and Abingdon used to be solid Lib Dem, before turning marginal more recently. Moran surprised everyone, not least herself, by turning over a 9,500 majority against a well liked Conservative candidate, Nicola Blackwood. "Oh I was very surprised," she explains. We weren't aware of where the wind was blowing. It really wasn't until 4am that we were sure. At that point I was giving interviews about how great it was to come so close."