WHITE PAPER OR WHITE ELEPHANT?

The waiting is nearly over. Tomorrow, at long last, it is Pancake Day, and the Government will publish the education Bill, setting out their final proposals for reforming English schools.
We will know then how much ministers have been forced to change their plans in the face of some of the longest running and most vocal opposition Tony Blair has encountered since the Iraq war.
One of the questions you will not hear ministers ask in public, however, will be "are these reforms really worth the hassle?"
Newspapers are claiming this morning that Ms Kelly's career as Education Secretary is at stake over the reforms, and there are fresh mutterings that the PM's own job could be in doubt if he fails to get the plans through Parliament.
(See the Times, for example: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2060541,00.html)
Even if the Bill does become law, Mr Blair's position at the head of the Labour Party will be decidedly tricky if he secures his great education legacy only with Tory votes.
And that is just the beginning of the endgame. The White Paper has caused a huge amount of political grief for the Government already.
John Prescott, Estelle Morris, Neil Kinnock and about 90 Labour MPs, along with all the major teachers' and headteachers' unions, all thought the White Paper was a really bad idea.
We have had a select committee report, an "Alternative White Paper", a lot of angry meetings, and letters offering "clarifications" (that means "concessions", just to clarify).
When it was published at the end of October, ministers were promising a Bill "early in the New Year".
By Christmas Ms Kelly was telling friends she expected the Bill "in the first few days of February". That slipped fairly quickly to some time "in February" once the scale of Labour opposition to the proposals became clear.
And sadly for them, the Government were getting no favours from the calendar. February has once again turned out to be rather a short little month and tomorrow, the 28th, is the last possible day when ministers could get the Bill out and claim they have stuck to the original timetable.
Half-term has been and gone and most schoolchildren worthy of the name will have an eye on all the Easter eggs piling up enticingly on the supermarket shelves.
Soon, however, we will know the final shape of the Bill.
Have the Government's promises of more freedoms for schools, choice for parents and influence for private backers survived all the sweeteners offered to Labour MPs? Or will they be as hollow as some of those chocolate eggs?
Still, some ministers may find a hollow chocolate egg preferable to other options when the time comes...