Michael gove

Boris Johnson insisted today that critics of his comments about IQ had chosen to ‘wilfully misconstrue what I said’. He told LBC radio this morning that ‘what I was saying actually is that there is too much inequality, and my speech was actually a warning, as correctly reported by many newspapers, actually a warning against letting this thing go unchecked. Because if you look at what’s happened in the last 20 to 30 years, there’s been a widening in income between rich and poor – there’s no question about that.’ He also managed to fail an IQ test, which was an inevitable consequence of this whole debacle. But Labour is

Boris Johnson’s speech at the Centre for Policy Studies, much misrepresented, is still grabbing headlines. Boris gave the Margaret Thatcher memorial lecture, so it’s no surprise it has been interpreted as a bid to succeed her. But another relationship is just as intriguing: was Boris also stealing Michael Gove’s clothes? The Mayor said much about the significance of the Conservatives’ past, but the Govian aspects of his speech offer a glimpse of what the party’s immediate future might look like, particularly when it comes to a future leadership contest. Boris’ ‘cornflake packet’ argument about meritocracy is a classic piece of Govian thinking. Posing the question ‘what would Maggie do?’, Boris

The blob strikes again. A video called Gove vs Reality is doing the rounds, taking pot shots at Michael Gove’s education policies, or ‘challenging his assumptions and the evidence he advances to support his approach’ as the producers put it. It’s had nearly 50,000 views so far, but is there any truth in it? With absurdly dramatic music, handpicked headlines and sound bites from the likes of Tom Watson, one might think that Michael Gove has been a complete disaster. Well, not surprisingly, there are a few untruths in the video: Gove has taken too many ‘urgency pills’ — shock, a minister who wants to get something done! As Matthew

Oh dear. As I explained yesterday, the most likely thing the Coalition parties could do to defuse Tristram Hunt’s troublemaking teaching qualifications debate this afternoon would be to table an amendment to the Labour motion which acknowledges the differences that both sides have, while supporting current government progress on education reform. This was the amendment that ministers came up with, signed by David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Michael Gove and David Laws: Line 1, leave out from ‘House’ to end and add ‘notes that this Coalition Government is raising the quality of teaching by quadrupling Teach First, increasing bursaries to attract top graduates into teaching, training more teachers in the classroom

Opposition Day debates from Labour are often rather boring, with a frontbencher getting very angry about energy bills (one of their favourite topics for opposition day debates), and three backbenchers pulling stern faces at the lonely minister whose job it is to reply. But tomorrow’s debate is being billed as a ‘box office’ encounter (which says a lot about the sort of thing people in Parliament get excited about) between the party’s new Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt and Michael Gove. Up to this point, Labour attempts to attack Gove have been about as effective as trying to scratch a diamond with a pin. But Hunt has already launched a

Newcastle upon Tyne Andrew Adonis is not your conventional ‘retired’ politician. The sprightly 50-year-old shadow infrastructure minister remains more influential than his current job title suggests. After running Tony Blair’s policy unit at No. 10, Adonis kick-started the academies programme and paved the way for Michael Gove’s education revolution. Under Gordon Brown he rose to Secretary of State for Transport, where he renationalised the East Coast railway and conceived High Speed 2. Adonis took a central role in Labour’s failed coalition negotiations with the Lib Dems (a party he was once a candidate for) before quitting frontline politics. Today, Adonis is more instrumental to Labour than ever, leading Ed Miliband’s

The Department for Education has just released a statement about free schools, which can be translated as saying: Oi Clegg! Free schools: clue’s in the name. They don’t have to listen to what you or any other politician thinks about the curriculum and they’re as free as private schools to take on staff who have not gone through the QTS teacher training programme. So speculate as much as you like, Cleggy, about the liberties you’d like to extinguish after 2015. The genie of school freedom is out of the bottle and won’t be put back in under this government. (My understanding is that David Laws is at one with Michael

Nick Clegg’s aides have been briefing the Sunday newspapers saying (in effect) that he that he’s had enough of this school freedom malarkey. Certain head teachers are using their new liberties in ways of which he disapproves. So if he’s in government after the next election, he’ll curtail these freedoms somehow. He’s chosen to enter the squabble over ‘qualified’ teachers (a canard, explained below). He also proposes curtailing freedoms teachers have been given over the curriculum. But the more important overall point is that he’s positioning himself as being opposed to Michael Gove’s reforms. ‘Clegg turns on Michael Gove over his ‘ideological’ school reforms’ says The Observer (right). The Independent on Sunday

The congratulations have been flowing in from across the Labour party for Tristram Hunt as the new Shadow Education Secretary. But there is no praise higher for the newly promoted MP than to get a detailed letter from Michael Gove testing his mettle just a few days into the job. Gove saw Stephen Twigg as someone he didn’t need to worry about a great deal, more of a distraction from his daily hobby of provoking the teaching unions than a mighty threat. But Hunt, while still possibly in danger of proving too Blairite for his party’s tastes, appears a mightier candidate. Education Questions in the Commons will certainly be an

Historian turned Tory MP Chris Skidmore will be hoping for something good in today’s reshuffle, especially after he was bigged up by Michael Gove from the stage at the Tory Conference last week as an old friend and one to watch on the backbenches. Praising his former adviser’s brain, the Education Secretary added ‘and most importantly of all ladies, he’s an eligible bachelor’. Which will come as news to Skidmore’s fiancé.

Michael Gove has only just started speaking to his party conference, but already he has made a powerful, emotive case for the moral value of his education reforms. The education section of the afternoon programme has resembled an evangelical Christian outreach event where people give their ‘testimonies’ about how they came to faith. It had a former US teaching union leader, George Parker, explaining how he was ‘born again’ as a reformer, and how he repented of the days he spent time and money defending bad teachers and opposing performance-related pay. He was followed by Mark Lehain from the Bedford Free School, and a parent of a pupil at the

When Steve Hilton left Downing Street he regarded his friend David Cameron’s premiership as a disappointment. As Matt d’Ancona reports, Hilton regarded Cameron as ‘reactive not transformative’. When he didn’t return at the end of his sabbatical, it was thought that was that. But for the last few days, Hilton has been back. When Cameron asked him to come and help on his conference speech, their old friendship kicked in and Hilton flew back from California. He was one of five people who hunkered down with Cameron at Chequers from Tuesday to Wednesday evening to work out how the Tory leader should respond to Miliband. With Hilton, Cameron and Michael