Gove versus Harman

Alex Gallagher

Watched it last night. Gove lost it Hattie stayed calm....

Sov_Res

Interesting. Didn't see this last night, but on Twitter Cons were crowing that this was a total knockout by Gove.

Seems much more evenly matched to me.

Chris lancashire

Ms Harman believes we should be "on the side of young people" which she translates as restoring the ludicrous £30 a week to tempt school kids to turn up, not charging so much for degree courses and, generally speaking, no cuts.
We have spent the last 25 years bribing the underclass with taxpayers money and look what we got. Ms Harman:
1. It really hasn't worked so stop doing it.
2. Wot Liam said - there is no money.

Heartlessly Hard Perry

At last!! - AND HOW WONDERFUL TO SEE AND HEAR A ROBUST AND FORTHRIGHT CONDEMNATION OF LIEBORE LYING AND PREVARICATION!!!

(my apologies for caps lock - but I'm not going to type it again)

This is what the H2B (Firebomber of QUANGOs) should have been saying from the outset of 'his' 'government', - and with as much energy.

FvH

Gove leadership bid starts here!! But unlike some politicians he doesn't look good losing his temper

Interestingly the lefties are crowing about this being a Harman easy win

You see what you want to see I suppose

RMH

Cant believe you can only do A levels with an EMA

Twatish idea

Raffles

Of Course Gove lost his temper, Harmans performance was sickening hypocrisy. She totally condemned the riots on the one hand and then blamed the Tories "cuts" on the other. This from a woman who was in Government for 13 years, creating the perfect environment for these scum to develop. What did they do about the welfare class in their 13 years except encourage and enslave it? More to the point, when 31 year old teachers are getting arrested for looting i dont think we have to get all clever about the reasons. Some people are greedy and immoral and if they think they can get away with it , they will.

Publius

"The Guardian's Nick Watt already has a detailed and insightful post"

Detailed, yes. Insightful, no.

Watt's in his article also seems to talk from both sides of his mouth.

As I have said before, the left has been tacitly egging on this kind of yobbery for some time.

Neil Turner

I think if we had to identify one politician, one individual, who more than any other was responsible for the breakdown in British society, it would be Harriet Harman.

We are truly reaping what she, and 13 years of New Labour have sown

My big disappointment is that having waited 13 years for a Tory Government we get the same amoral leadership

Cameron is possibly more PC, more anti-family, anti-fatherhood than New Labour

Will some real politicians please stand up

Holly ......

Mmmm...
The young people looting, burning and causing damage were raised under thirteen years of Labour.
What have the monetary bribes actually done to raise the moral standards of these youths?

Let's hear MORE politicians tell it like it is....
Just a thought

sam k

Gove believes in what he is saying
Harman is simply trying to score points
No wonder Gove was irritated

Mal

Gove forceably highlighted Harman's opportunistic partisan approach - and he did well to be heard over the constant interruptions. I also thought he laid the majority of the blame just where it should be laid. Harman knew she was in danger of this and closed the arguement down by pointing out that those affected were ' her ' constituents. It is about time we saw some passion from a coalition minister. If that was ' losing it ' then we should see more.

Ruby Duck

Very difficult to deal with someone denying that they are saying what they are saying while they are saying it.

Mirtha Tidville

I watched it live, Gove was animated,true, but thats long way from losing your temper. He was gracious towards Harperson,far more than I would have been, as well as pointing out her weaknesses. When she starts to lose an argument these days, she does 2 things.Firstly over praises Milliband and talks,volubly, at her accuser, as she did last night.

She is not a debater,sadly,she is a harridon. Wouldnt say Gove won, but he did enough to put in a very creditable performance indeed.

Tiberius

Well, all that confirms is that you have to be good at expounding bullshit and non-sequitors (laced with generous proportions of conjunctions such as "actually") to get to the top of the Labour party, a job made easier by interview chairmen who don't stop you interrupting the other guy at will.

Tom Pride

FvH
“You see what you want to see I suppose”

Yes, so true. As far as “losing it” goes, normally I would agree that the one who does so comes off worst. On this occasion, however, Gove’s genuine outrage and barely controlled anger reflected and empathised with the anger of the man on the Clapham omnibus. That said, Harman was slipping too as she felt the fury of Gove.

As far as the causes and where we go from here are concerned, I have been impressed by two articles today:
Melanie at http://melaniephillips.com/goodbye-to-the-enlightenment and Charles Crawford at http://www.thecommentator.com/article/363/the_disastrous_death_of_common_sense (ht Guido)

If this is going to be put right, and it has to be, it’s going to be a long hard slog.

John Adlington

Gove was just flabberghasted by Harman's egregious moral relativism (a precondition of multi-culturalism). The woman made an association between the withdrawal of the educational maintenance allowance and the motivation of the rioters. As Old Holborn said yesterday on twitter, if they are so miffed about its withdrawal then why were they not looting bookshops?

Harman and those like her have given us a society where none of us is reponsible for his own actions but we are all (taxpayers in particular)responsible for the actions of others.

Derek

Tiberius

Exactly; and notice how, by contrast, Mr. Gove sits patiently and politely waiting out Ms. Harman at the start of the piece. Two different approaches to conversation - the civilized and the savage.

Simon Stephenson.

This discussion just goes to show what a complete waste of time it is in our adversarial system showing the opposite sides in an across the table "discussion". The situation was that Gove was only prepared to discuss the actual events and their criminality, while Harman was never going to allow a member of the government to enlist her as a subordinate on his team - quite rightly, because in our system it is her duty to oppose, and to keep the government "honest" by continuing to oppose.

The inevitable position of both parties was partisan intransigence, and why the public should consider that our system allows anything different is a mystery.

Sov_Res

@Tom Pride
"Gove’s genuine outrage and barely controlled anger"

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, watch Gove's microexpressions between 5:34-5:36... did you see it? The two little almost imperceptible "I've got her" smirks that he exhibits when he realises he's got a potential knockout with the "13 years" line?

Don't let yourself be fooled. It's entirely synthetic and an exquisite performance. What do you expect? The man's a brilliant professional politician.

Swissy J

It is significant that the only shop not vandalised and looted by this "vulnerable community" was Waterstones. EMAs - what for ?

PayDirt

The problem with Cameron and a good any others in Govt is that they have no direct experience of dealing with adolescents. They do not understand, they only have experience of their own teenage years. They need to listen to practical advice on how to control wayward youth from the older generation.

Ian Leslie

I'm not sure Nick Watt's commentary was terribly insightful. He over-explains Gove's anger. There was nothing tactical about it as far as I could see. I think he was genuinely surprised and outraged by HH's point-scoring (versus more measured approach taken by her leader).

David Ossitt

He did very well, when you consider that the left wing presenter allowed super bitch a very long start, then let her interrupt ad nauseam.

Gove showed courtesy to a truly nasty piece of work.

Craig Strachan

The meerkat goes mental.

Ken

Frankly expressing views of any sort about Harpocrite is to give her far too much oxygen. Perhaps her constituents would care to light her fire and not put it out.

EC

I'm 100% in agreement with what Mr. Gove said, and also with what Mr. Ossitt wrote.

Derek

Simon Stephenson

Mr. Gove did attempt to open up the discussion by suggesting that thirteen years of Labour misrule had something to do with creating the malaise to which the riots gave expression. I agree with you that there was little chance of an adult debate on this. Ms. Harman was however skewered, for those able to focus on the point above her egregious interruptions, by her own weael-like inconsistency that one the one hand she did not want to "unpick" the reasons for the riots until the shock of events had worn off, while on the other offering Coalition policies as the cause.

If we really want the causes of the riots examined, we need to hear thinkers with no direct party affiliations to restrain and narrow their explanations.

We do not need these politicians for these brief,infantile, shallow confrontations on short TV news items. These career politicians are no longer the answer to the country's problems. People must find a political form in which they are represented instead of manipulated.

It's going to be a long road - and a hard rain.

London Calling

Pete Hoskin
The politics of police cuts
August 10th, 2011 1:29pm

“I do think Cameron's on to something with the responsibility stuff, though. But the emphasis ought to be fixing problems that government has nurtured, such as a welfare system that incentivises worklessness”

Pete…
If Harriet Harman is to be criticised for her comments on the demoralisation of youth support through cutbacks, the removal of financial support through EMA, job centres closing, connexions etc. in conjunction with discussing the riots, why do you feel the need to do the same by mentioning the above on the welfare system in conjunction with Cameron’s speech?

Reading most of the comments so far, some of which are critical of the Police and the lack of political leadership, however stereotyping will teach us very little, and racism nothing at all.

From then Guardian…

Who are the rioters? Young men from poor areas ... but that's not the full story
The crowds involved in violence and looting are drawn from a complex mix of social and racial backgrounds
Jay Kast, 24, a youth worker from East Ham who has witnessed rioting across London over the last three nights, said he was concerned that black community leaders were wrongly identifying a problem "within".
"I've seen Turkish boys, I've seen Asian boys, I've seen grown white men," he said. "They're all out there taking part." He recognised an element of opportunism in the mass looting but said an underlying cause was that many young people felt "trapped in the system". "They're disconnected from the community and they just don't care," he said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/09/london-riots-who-took-part

Marcellus

Gove's performance was terrific. A bit of passion is good for politics and all too often absent. Harman was dead and buried, from the moment she started making her vaccuous comments about that Nick Park-created leader of hers (Wallace/Ed). Gove simply administered the last rites but did so very effectively.

Dimoto

When it comes down to "who won", you only have to remember one thing (which miliband is obviously aware of).

Forget the partisans. The great mass of Brits are angered, outraged and thirsty for retribution against the thugs.

The audience will have been cheering Gove on, whilst Harman just confirmed her caricature. The public are in no mood to listen to her drivel.

From Miliband's (carefully choreographed) speech today, he does get it.

Derek

For a more detailed analysis of causes, Max Hastings makes a fist at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024284/UK-riots-2011-Liberal-dogma-spawned-generation-brutalised-youths.html

I S

Righteous anger from Gove who called it correctly when describing Harridan as 'talking out of both sides of her mouth.'
Can we have him as Home Secretary please as he seems one of the few success stories so far?

godwin

I remember John Redwood being attacked when he criticised the ease with which single parents were being incentivised by the tax payer in the 1990s by Labour. Today those single parents have unleashed a youth that are manifesting the errors of everything the Labour Party stands for. Just like the Labour party destroyed our economy, they also created and financed an underclass whose electoral loyalty the party relies on. They are the biggest enemy to the state we are in, they created it, financed it and have the nerve to blame the coalation. This is what got Mr Gove upset.

John Richardson

Neil Turner
August 10th, 2011 2:18pm

My goodness Sir!

Your post is the pristine definition of 'half right'.IMHO.

I was cheering your words concerning this repellent woman...and then...a CONSERVATIVE Government arriving to heal the wounds she inflicted?

I'd weep with happiness if it t'were so.

This crowd imposed her workplace black/homosexual/transgendered quota system on the private sector with zero legal obligation to do so.

A 'occupying the Saarland' moment for many who had not sussed them yet.

Regards.

Andy Leeds

Harriet Harman is a stupid, ignorant idiot. How dare she sit there and utter that drivel. And now this rioting has turned to Murder.

Simon Stephenson.

Derek : 4.08pm

With respect, Gove throwing in "13 years of Labour misrule" is hardly opening up the discussion. How did he expect Harman to respond? "Yes Michael, I agree, 1997 - 2010 were an absolute disaster for this country"?

We're certainly not going to get an adult discussion from politicians - the way forward, I would say, is to abandon any thought of putting them head-to-head on TV or radio, and also to abandon question-answer sessions between interviewer and politician, which have become equally futile. Instead, give the politician a fixed time to state his case on any particular issue, install a moderator to interrupt him if he deviates from the subject at issue, and insist on time-delayed broadcasts, with editing out of irrelevance, so that the politician is not able successfully to play games with the moderator.

Let's see how they respond to this.

Richard Bayswater

Harriet Harman is one of the most frustrating women in politics. She'll contradict herself during an argument and holds it all together because, like others on the "faux left", she doesn't believe a word she's saying. Anger is truth, lies remain calm.

paulg

The major cities of the United Kingdom are now burning and the questions must be asked: what was the spark that light the flame, what was the fuel that fed the fire and what was the oxygen that spread it.

Disenfranchised youth? Where does disenfranchisement come from, no hope no structure no disciple. And the only proven structure that we can definitively state is the family unit, hope springs from support; and disciple is the means to achieve it.

Thirteen years of socialist thinking have produced a feral underclass, social engineering, where the State becomes a father and a mother is passed like a joint between between the dregs of a society that the socialist state creates: socialism breed filth, as its children are atomised, marginalised and ultimately despised.

Thirteen years of undermining all the institutions of the state: police, teachers, judges, neighbours and morality is the oxygen that spread this fire.

Ultimately, the rags that support and promote this are the tinder that should hang their head in shame when they see people packing their burnt out belongs and trundle off from the brave new world.

Every burnt out building, every family left homeless, every family business destroyed,is a testament to how wicked and pernicious the last Labour government was. And with the help of God it surely will be the last.

Holly ......

Just goes to show.
It is not how long you are allowed to speak,
it is what you say that really counts.

Gove nailed it.

Pramston

Harman was engaging in Orwellian 'doublethink' and good for Gove for getting annoyed, we've had too much of this go unchallenged for too long.

2trueblue

Gove was right, the fruit of the last 13yrs is what we are now reaping. this is Liebore and Bliars legacy to us. A young population who have no aspiration, no education, have not an idea in their head that there is an order to life, and respect for one self and others. they are Bliars children. child poverty grew under Liebore, at a time when we were supposedly going through the most prosperous times ever. Well we now know that it was all built on sand and has nofoundations

Stewart

A fantastic performance from Gove. The only downside was that Harman was repeatedly permitted by the presenter to interupt and not told to wait her turn. Gove should have admonished her once for this early on and put the onus on the presenter to follow suit. If Harman doesn't realise she took a beating here she is as deluded as her policies suggest.

Archie

That photograph says everything about this ghastly harridan!

Sir Everard Digby

Please,accept this for what it is -a further pantomime act; No-one knows what the motivation of each 'rioter' was - so Gove and Harman are simply presenting us with another drama based on zero facts and 100% assumptions and 100% political prejudice.

They have no interest in dealing with the real issue here - Liberalism is a fine concept but does need boundaries which society understands. It appears some sections of society don't understand where the boundaries are and the political classes seem unwilling or unable to set any meaningful ones. Coupled with a justice system where the definitions of a victim and justice have been subverted to a point where perpertrators of crime seem to acquire more rights than their victims and punishments become ever more meaningless,why is anyone surprised at the outcome as demonstrated over the last few days?.

Looting has become ' a giggle'

Paddy

Well said Holly.

Harman is a disgrace!

Erica Blair

Did Gove set a good example by putting a stay in a luxury hotel with his family on expenses?

Also, a hoodie would have to do a lot of looting to match this:

Shortly after being elected MP for Surrey Heath in 2005, Mr Gove furnished his house in north Kensington in a five month period between December 2005 and April 2006.Around a third of the £7,000 was spent at Oka, an upmarket interior design company established by Lady Annabel Astor, Mr Cameron’s mother-in-law.Mr Gove, the shadow Schools secretary, bought a £331 Chinon armchair from there, as well as a Manchu cabinet for £493 and a pair of elephant lamps for £134,50.He also claimed for a £750 Loire table – although the Commons’ authorities only allowed him to claim £600 – a birch Camargue chair worth £432 and a birdcage coffee table for £238.50.Yesterday Mr Cameron said Mr Gove would repay the £7,000 cost of the furnishings to the Commons’ authorities.
11

Jamie

The typical refrain from the intellectual left is that to understand is not to justify.

Quite right. But the problem is that Harman, Cooper, Livingstone, together with the usual suspect leftist commentators _aren't trying to understand_.

None of them have taken _remotely seriously_ the following points:
1. If it's about poverty, then why weren't there riots in Cardiff?
2. If it's about the conditions in those areas, why weren't Kurdish, Chinese, and Polish kids amongst their number?

Rehashing the old 'deprivation' mantra is so vacuous. It is _blindingly obvious_ that the people most disposed to be involved are those with least to lose, but that does not imply that deprivation has any predictive power. You simply need to look at the overwhelming number of similarly-deprived people who didn't participate.

The fact is that they are _terrified_ of any sort of explanation based on recognition of the existence of a sub-culture in urban areas that is profoundly corrosive of the sort of values that have taken centuries to develop in England.

The irony is that this sub-culture in actual fact transcends race. That is, in fact, one of the nicer points about it (and it does have nice points, such as the esteem of musical achievement and authenticity).

By all means try to understand, but stop arbitrarily putting culturally-based explanations into no-go areas. It isn't racist to point out that a certain sub-culture, largely imported from the US, prevails in our inner cities, and that it is causing big problems.

Simon Stephenson.

Erica Blair : 11.35am

I think your post got cut short before you could expand into why we should consider Michael Gove to be anything other than highly competent as a member of this government, and as Education Secretary in particular.

I can't believe that someone like you, who so obviously knows how to put a sentence together, can believe that anachronistic mud-slinging contributes anything to anyone, so why don't you continue your interrupted post and tell us about something that matters?

Eugene Fraxby

So why didn't Mizz Harman stand for Labour leadership then? I don't want to hear any more nonsense about glass ceilings etc.

Tankus

Quite noticeable and shameful how quickly the opposition benches thinned out after only an hour or so into the debate

tony

Sorry, can't actually bear to watch. Any prospect of Harman speaking is bad enough, but to hear that she wasn't trounced to pulp means I'm heading for the bathroom in a moment. Anyone faced with Harman needs to be far harder, treating her as they would other pariahs like Griffin, Moseley, Botha et al. Very calmly now, "since Labour caused these problems, for you to offer a solution means that we should necessarily look the other way."