Michael Gove has just announced he is standing down at the election. He spent the past few days agonising privately over the decision, and published a letter on Twitter paying tribute to the Conservative party’s legacy in government – mostly his legacy, in fact. He names education reform, funding for modernising prisons and rehabilitation, progressive environmental policies, levelling up, housing reform, Brexit and building safety. It is notable that he says he was ‘pleased to be able to introduce the most wide-ranging reforms to leasehold, social housing, and supported housing in a generation’. That is true, but the leasehold reforms did not go as far as Gove had wanted, and his attempts to reform the private rented sector were also frustrated by colleagues.
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