Michael gove

Don’t Liam Fox and Michael Gove know how to use Skype? Just as the Cabinet finally start to reach agreement on the nuts and bolts of the UK’s Brexit negotiating position, a row has broken out across the Atlantic about chlorinated chicken. Much to Fox’s frustration, his trip to Washington to begin US/UK trade talks has been dominated by chicken. After accusing the British press of being ‘obsessed’ by the issue of chlorinated chicken being a part of a trade deal, Fox has attempted to dampen down speculation on the issue. Speaking to Newsnight yesterday from Washington, Fox acknowledged farming concerns – but declined to rule out allowing chlorine-washed chicken into the

Michael Gove’s speech this morning on his plan for a ‘Green Brexit’ is one of the first signs of what he is up to in his new role as Defra secretary. It was always a given that he would stir things up, but it remained to be seen whether his Brexit plan would be judged as a good thing or a bad thing by British famers and rural communities. So what did this morning’s speech deliver? Well, when it comes to farming, the answer is far more questions than it did answers. Of course, this was a speech to various environmental groups at the World Wildlife Fund’s headquarters, so it’s unsurprising

Although attributed to Milton Friedman, the assertion that ‘there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch’ had been around long before he took it for the title of an economics book in 1975. It has been used since by many who have never given monetarism a second’s thought. Physicists say the universe is a closed system. No magic source can give it free energy or indeed calories. Mathematicians and computer technicians are as adamant that something cannot come from nothing. Everyone agrees the lunch bill must be paid. Everyone, that is, except British politicians and the voters who endorse them in their millions. If it is true that a

To say that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove’s relationship is a complex one would be an understatement. The Vote Leave comrades fell out spectacularly when the former education secretary turned on BoJo during the last Tory leadership campaign – opting to launch his own (doomed) bid for No 10 at the expense of his so-called friend’s. But there is good news at last for fans of the Boris/Gove psycho drama: it looks like the band are back together. With Gove back in the Cabinet as Defra Secretary, his written statement today reveals that it’s Johnson who he is trusting with withdrawing the UK from the London Fisheries Convention. Today the Foreign

Michael Gove: The DUP deal is good for the union The newly installed Environment Secretary Michael Gove took to Andrew Marr’s sofa today to defend the government’s deal with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. Controversial for awarding the province an additional £1 billion, Gove rejected the idea that deal this amounted to a ‘bung’, and argued that far from dividing the country, the ‘confidence and supply’ deal would serve to strengthen the United Kingdom: Marr: Can we at least determine that there is not going to be another… large about of money paid to the DUP? Because [Sir Nicholas] MacPherson, the former Permanent Secretary to the Treasury said

As Michael Gove settles into his new role as Defra secretary, word reaches Steerpike that the Conservative MP is already facing some opposition from the farming community. On Wednesday, Michael Gove boarded the Greater Anglia train from London Liverpool Street to Norwich in order to attend the Royal Norfolk Show. Unfortunately the intrepid minister found himself waylaid outside Ipswich for about an hour. The reason? Cows on the line. Having enraged teachers and lawyers in his previous roles, it’s taken Mr. Gove just 17 days in this job to unite livestock in a picket against him, observes a fellow passenger. Sterling work.

Go back ten years and you could never imagine green campaigners greeting Michael Gove’s return to government with a mixture of contempt and despair. It feels like another age, but in the last decade Gove, Cameron and Osborne decided the only way to stop the Tory party remaining in opposition was to force it to come to terms with modern Britain. ‘Detoxifying the brand’ – to use their advertising agency jargon – meant Conservatives should stop giving the impression that ethnic minorities weren’t truly British. They should help all people, rather than just the comfortable. Most of all, Conservatives must stop being John Stuart Mill’s ‘Stupid Party,’ which resists new

Michael Gove will get all the headlines, and there is something darkly ironic about his appointment. Theresa May may be fighting for her political life, but even her 11th hour manoeuvres have a sharp edge. She’s been forced to bring back a man she sacked, but her choice of job is lovely: Michael Gove of the Leave campaign now gets to tell British farmers how life will be better when farm subsidies end. Meanwhile, Gove replaces Andrea Leadsom, another Leaver, who as Commons leader now gets to oversee the speeding legislative freight train that is the Great Repeal Bill, not to mention seven or eight other bits of Brexit legislation

The chances of my 20-year-old student son being at an Ariana Grande concert on a Monday night were, my head told me, zero. But as I watched ambulances converge on the arena, my maternal heart was in my mouth. Oliver had just been to the premier league darts at the venue (like me, there is no sport my son doesn’t enjoy watching). I called. No answer. I sent a text. ‘Don’t go near Manchester Arena — explosion.’ Then another one. ‘Let me know you’re OK.’ He was. But those teenagers, all those girls. Eight years old. The nation weeps for other people’s children. The day I went Yellow Tory and

Watching the general election from my newsroom is an out-of-body experience. I’ve been involved in the last five general elections variously as photocopy boy, parliamentary candidate, shadow minister, campaign manager and chancellor. This time I’m reporting on the election as editor of the Evening Standard. I have a lot to learn; but I have a great team to help me. There is something remarkable, magical even, about the way every day tens of thousands of words are written on everything from the implications of the French election to Arsène Wenger, to this summer’s trendiest cocktails; then laid out on pages with striking pictures and adverts; printed on a million copies;

It is one of the great mysteries of modern British politics: how public schools managed to survive three periods of Labour government with their tax breaks intact. How was it that an education secretary, Anthony Crosland, could say: ‘If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England, and Wales and Northern Ireland’, and yet do nothing to make life difficult for independent schools? Suzi Leather, Tony Blair’s appointment as head of the Charity Commission, demanded private schools do more to justify their charitable status. They upped their bursaries a bit and invited state schools to use their swimming pools every so often,