Michael gove

All they need is Gove

Lately, people only have to look at me to splurge their deepest, darkest secret. Last May, they did a terrible thing. They voted Tory. Now they’re contemplating greater deviance: voting to leave the EU — if only, they say, the campaign was fronted by someone they could believe in. And who do they want? The answer surprised me. Theresa is no temptation, as it turns out, nor even Boris. No, it’s Michael Gove they fancy. Westminster types might read this and splutter, ‘What tosh! If there’s one thing we know about the British public, it’s that they hate him.’ But these are the experts who failed to predict the outcome of the

Who will be out for Out?

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Vote Leave’s Stephen Parkinson discuss Euroscepticsm”] The Leave campaigns continue to bicker with each other in increasingly absurd fashion, but it would be wrong to think that everything is going the In campaign’s way. Number 10, as I write in The Sun today, have been taken aback by the sheer scale of the hostility to the deal. There have been some very tense meetings in Downing Street this week. Cameron himself is, I understand, acutely aware of how volatile the situation is and how quickly the referendum could turn. But those around him are more confident. They believe that they are succeeding in denying the

England named worst in developed world for literacy. So yes, school reform is needed.

Today’s OECD study of basic skills ranks England lowest in the developed world for literacy, and second lowest for numeracy. We knew that our schools might struggle to compete with the likes of Singapore and South Korea, but this puts the problem in a whole new perspective. It’s the delayed results of a study taken four years ago where 5,000 in each country were sampled so, to some extent, it’s a hangover from the days when a far greater share of children left school without five decent passes. But the report also found that England has three times more low-skilled people among those aged 16-19 than the best-performing countries like

Gove axes another Grayling plan

You can tell when Michael Gove is driving all over another one of the policies of his predecessor Chris Grayling purely by the volume of incredibly polite language and fulsome praise that he deploys when doing so. In a written ministerial statement published today, the Justice Secretary announces that he will not be going ahead with major changes to the legal aid system designed by Grayling when he was Justice Secretary. The statement says the following: I would like to place on the record my gratitude for the determined, yet sensitive, way in which my predecessors pursued these economies. Gove also praises the ‘careful negotiation’ that Grayling carried out on the

What’s the hold up with the British Bill of Rights?

Before the election, the Tories talked about introducing a British Bill of Rights in their first 100 days in office. But eight months on from the election, the government hasn’t even started consulting on it yet. Some of this delay is understandable. When Michael Gove was made Justice Secretary, he wanted to work out his own solution to this problem. But the timetable has just kept slipping. After the election, we were told proposals would come in the autumn. Then, it was before the end of the year. Then in December, in the New Year. Yet, we still haven’t seen these proposals—and won’t in the next few weeks either. But,

Which way will Boris and Gove go on Europe?

David Cameron might have announced this week that Cabinet Ministers will be allowed to campaign for Out come the EU referendum. But Downing Street is doing what it can to limit how many ministers take up this offer. At the moment, the consensus view around the Cabinet table is that four Cabinet Ministers are going to be for Out—Chris Grayling, Theresa Villiers, John Whittingdale and IDS—with another—Priti Patel—highly likely to. As I say in The Sun today, if Cameron can keep the number of Cabinet Outers down to four or five, Number 10 will be delighted. Cameron will be able to say that the vast majority of the Cabinet support

Sarah Vine reveals her Christmas wish: separate bedrooms

Buying a present for a loved one at Christmas can be a difficult and time-consuming task, so luckily Sarah Vine has made her husband Michael Gove’s job easy thanks to her column in today’s Daily Mail. In a piece entitled ‘Sorry chaps but women love sleep FAR more than sex!’, Vine — who says that there are ‘vast chunks of a woman’s life when surrendering to the pillow and duvet is infinitely more enticing a prospect’ than sex — argues that men should refrain from purchasing sexy lingerie for their partners in favour of comfortable pyjamas: ‘She’ll get a good night’s sleep in their cocooning embrace (especially if you disappear to the spare room) and

Michael Gove’s greatest success so far — not being Chris Grayling

Michael Gove’s tenure as Justice Secretary has been notable for U-turns on the most controversial things done by his predecessor, Chris Grayling. At Justice Questions in the Commons today, Gove confirmed another policy reversal to MPs which emerged last week: the criminal courts charge. Since April, the charge meant that convicted criminals had to pay £150 – £1,200 towards to cost of their cases. Some felt the criminal courts charge was unfair, acting as a perverse incentive to plead guilty, and 50 magistrates resigned in protest. Gove explained the government’s decision: ‘The government has listened carefully to the concerns which have been raised about the criminal courts charge and in the light

Could Michael Gove help Jeremy Hunt solve the junior doctor row?

That 98 per cent of junior doctors have voted in favour of strike action over their new contract shows the extent of the stand-off between the medical profession and Jeremy Hunt. It is not possible that all the members of the BMA who turned out to vote (76 per cent) are raving left-wingers. Most of them weren’t particularly politicised before this dispute. The question that a number of Tory MPs and ministers are asking is whether a generation of people who, given their education and income bracket, fall quite naturally into the group normally pretty likely to vote Tory are now never going to do so because of the bad blood

Michael Gove has a rare opportunity to reform the prison system. Will he take it?

The Chancellor announced this morning that he will sell off old Victorian jails, which are on prime land for housing development, and replace them with a series of new prisons. The decision to sell off old prisons is a relatively easy one to take. The old prison estate in London is worth a fortune, is expensive to maintain, and new prisons can be run more efficiently. What’s more, prison is notoriously bad at rehabilitating offenders and protecting the public – as nearly half of offenders go on to commit another crime within a year of being released. The harder decision for the government is: what should replace the old prisons? Short-term economic

David Cameron cannot escape blame for the Kids Company scandal

Today’s National Audit Office report into the collapse of Kids Company shines new light on the scandal. It shows that the charity received at least £46 million of public money during its 19 year existence despite repeated warnings from civil servants that funding it was unwise. The report also shows that ministers thought they knew best, and that many senior politicians ignored the concerns being raised. These MPs happily approved of the public purse being dipped into at the request of the charity’s founder, Camila Batmanghelidjh, and her chairman of trustees, BBC executive Alan Yentob, while at the same time other charitable organisations were given far less. Whether the state should bankroll

Once upon a time… history lessons weren’t so fragmented

What might a bright working-class boy from south London have learnt in his school history lessons a hundred years ago? We know something of his curriculum from notes made by the poet and painter David Jones about his own Edwardian education – paternalist, imperialist, chauvinist – at Brockley Road School, a state-funded secondary from 1906-1909. Summing up the ethos of his school history lessons he made this list: Below the belt / Natives / Sportsman / Whiteman / Boxing / Lower Deck / Club / English woman-hood / Dr Livingstone / North West Passage  / ‘but not the six hundred’ / Stock exchange / Slave trade / …sun never sets

The fine art of talking bunkum

At the last minute, a friend invited me to a ‘Distinguished Speakers Dinner’ at the Oxford and Cambridge Club earlier this week. The dinner was being hosted by Christ’s College and the speaker was Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate galleries and one of the college’s alumni. His subject was ‘The arts in education: luxury or necessity?’, which is why my friend thought I might be interested. Indeed I was. There’s an awful lot of bunkum talked about the arts in education and I’m afraid Sir Nicholas’s speech was no exception. Nothing wrong with the overall thrust of his argument — that arts subjects in schools and universities should

Letters: The immoral Vladimir Putin

Putin the gangster Sir: Putin is a gangster’s gangster. While he ruins Russia economically and diplomatically to keep himself in power, he behaves like a renegade in Ukraine and Syria (‘Putin’s triumph’, 10 October). He is a stirrer and an adventurer, who causes danger in the world and to his fellow citizens. In 2011 he suggested that Russia should join the EU in a common market reaching from Lisbon to Vladivostok. That would be a good idea if the country were ready in terms of human rights and law and order, for Russia’s obvious political destiny is as a bridge between Europe and Asia. But Vlad changed his tune straight

Britain should not mistake its allies for friends

It would be hard to dream up a more absurd piece of political satire than an agency of the British government called Just Solutions International winning a contract to train prison officers in a country that has executed 175 people in the past year, many of them in public beheadings for offences such as sorcery, witchcraft, adultery and political activism. That it sought this contract in the first place is a sign of the great void at the heart of our foreign policy. This week, the Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, pulled out of the deal with Saudi Arabia — thereby attracting the ire of the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, who called

Gove wins battle over Saudi prisons contract

The government is pulling out of the £5.9 million deal to run a prison in Saudi Arabia, Number 10 has announced, after a row between two Cabinet ministers surfaced in the press. Downing Street also said that David Cameron was writing to the Saudi authorities to raise the ‘extremely concerning’ case of Karl Andree, a British pensioner sentenced to 350 lashes after being caught with homemade alcohol. But the Prime Minister’s official spokeswoman said that the Andree case wasn’t linked to the decision on the prison deal, and wouldn’t answer questions on when the decision was made. This is of course a victory for Michael Gove, who had been pressing

Kate Maltby

Will Michael Gove dare to bring Christianity into his prison reform plans?

This April, Michael Gove wrote in The Spectator: ‘To call yourself a Christian in contemporary Britain is to invite pity, condescension or cool dismissal.’ Certainly, the titters it provoked in the more left-wing corners of Twitter rather proved his point (a white man? complaining of prejudice?). On faith, as in everything else, Britain today erodes into fragments, small landscapes inhabited by the mutually deaf. I carry no brief for the man: my instinctive sympathy with his school reforms is matched only by my frustration with what Ian Leslie, in a profile published this week, calls the temperament by which Gove ‘is drawn irresistibly to the theatre of battle’. But even his greatest enemies

The Tories are right to focus on prison reform – it’s a classic conservative issue

Many people were surprised when David Cameron placed prison reform at the heart of his party conference speech last week. His passionate words on the subject of state failure when it comes to incarceration put the issue firmly at the heart of his reawakened vision of compassionate conservatism. It is now at the core of the Conservative party’s bid to seize the centre ground after Labour’s refusal to accept the verdict of the voters.  Hopefully this marks a significant moment, when the debate on crime and punishment shifts from the ‘sterile lock em up’ stance to a more rational and evidence-based approach focused on stopping people from reoffending. Bear in

Michael Gove: ‘social progress has always been a Conservative cause’

Michael Gove may have left the Department for Education but he hasn’t lost his reforming zeal. In his Tory conference speech, the Justice Secretary revealed that his inspiration in pursuing criminal justice reforms is Winston Churchill — and not because of his role leading Britain through some of its darkest hours: ‘The man who was, perhaps, our greatest Prime Minister was also a truly great Home Secretary. He argued that there should be “a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment, a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every

The Good Right paves the way to a greater majority in 2020

The Tories may have won the general election but that doesn’t mean they have won the argument. The Good Right, a project setup by Times columnist Tim Montgomerie, hopes to offer guidance on where the Conservative party can go over the next few years. Last night, Montgomerie hosted a dinner at Old Trafford to examine what Conservatives are doing to tackle poverty featuring four of the most interesting thinkers in the party — Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith, Sajid Javid and Ruth Davidson. They all argued that the Tories need to do more to show their compassionate side as well as understand why people dislike them. Each of of the speakers had different areas of emphasis but the