Michael Gove is absolutely right to draw attention to the misleading spin weaved by Gordon Brown on language teaching. The Prime Minister has arrived in Beijing calling for Mandarin to be taught in all British schools. Yet last year only two British university students graduated in Mandarin Chinese. So how is he going to deliver on that one? Shei shei ni, Gordon.

Yet Britain does have an extraordinary language ability which gives our economy a profound advantage over the rest of western Europe. With more than 5 million people living in the UK whose families have settled here over the past sixty years, Britain has a rich cultural background with strong links with almost every country in the world.

The real competitive advantage that Britain has over France and Germany is that in many Indian and Pakistani homes in British cities, Urdu, Hindi, Gujerati, and other dialects are spoken as well as, for business and education, English. This give Britain a profound head start in trade with the world's fastest growing eceonomies. It not just spin Gordon, its reality. Rather than contrive something at great cost that will be difficult to deliver, we should celebrate skills that are already here, and make sure that its potential delivers the competitive advantage that Britain already has into economic success.