This charming man: an audience with the Gover

24 September 2008

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Fraser Nelson meets the shadow schools secretary and finds him bracingly radical and disarmingly polite: a recipe for success in government

This may sound like a politician protesting too much, but Mr Gove has good reason to be so family-orientated. His children, aged three and five, are the first blood relatives he has known. He was adopted in infancy and his father, an Aberdeen-based fish merchant, saved and forwent holidays for years to send his son to the fee-paying Robert Gordon’s College. His sister Angela, adopted when he was five, went to Aberdeen School for the Deaf, and he learnt sign language to talk to her. He knows nothing about his birth parents, but fatherhood has led him to wonder about them.

‘Looking at my children as they develop, I see certain traits and wonder where they come from. Are there things in my ancestry, in my genes, which I see reflected in them and their behaviour? I can recognise my traits, certain things that are Sarah’s, but there are these curious quirks. So it does raise all sorts of questions in my mind.’ His hand-waving, at its peak when describing the brave new educational world, has died down.

It’s likely that Mr Gove’s birth mother knows what became of him: there can’t be too many women who gave up a son for adoption in Edinburgh in August 1967. But he has resolved not to find her. ‘To try and find out who my birth mother is would imply to my mum, the woman who brought me up, that there was a missing part in my upbringing that could only be provided by finding that bit of my life story. I feel that my mother is my complete mother.’

The only subject off limits in our interview is the sacrifice his family had to make for his expensive education. It’s clear this left a lasting impact, but, he says, ‘I don’t want to sound like the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch.’ His schools policy would be to extend to everyone the education standard that his father only just managed to afford for him.

As we walked away from the hotel, Mr Gove’s minder from Central Office started murmuring in his ear, and I wonder if he will come to regret being so unequivocal about his timeframe. Gove wants to achieve in four or five years what Sweden achieved in ten, not fully knowing what obstacles he will meet along the way. It is a leap of faith: faith in what the public can do if they are given the tools to do so by a government that trusts them. A gamble, yes. But it is, without a doubt, a very Conservative gamble.

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Tory Warren

September 25th, 2008 10:58am Report this comment

The Tory party needs to be very careful of how it uses Gove. He is the sort of person who comes across as smug and self righteous (without meaning it I suspect) and can arouse an irrational dislike in people both inside and outside the party. The nuts magazine comments are a prime example.

David Short

September 25th, 2008 1:55pm Report this comment

I can't understand The Spectator bootlicking the currency Conservative party, which seems to have none of the principles or beliefs of traditional Conservatives.

'Audience' indeed!

wrinkled weasel

September 26th, 2008 12:17am Report this comment

Yes, charming. And for someone who looks like a twelve year-old spelling bee competition winner he has a stunningly beautiful wife.

Ulster Ex-Grammar School

September 26th, 2008 1:49pm Report this comment

Nice idea to encourage new schools to be set up - just as long as they're not grammar schools, of course. You can have any type of new school you like, according to Mr Gove, so long as it doesn't select by academic ability.

If Michael had grown up in Northern Ireland, his parents would not have had to fork out a fortune on a private school, because there would have been plenty of grammar schools. Here you have an example of a state school system within the UK with widespread public support - NI has virtually no private schooling.

Yet, for those in England who cannot go private, the Tories offer only revamped comprehensive schools to which many of them would never send their own children.

Sara Waterson

September 29th, 2008 11:04pm Report this comment

Grammar Schools are the only answer: not only do they properly educate, but they ensure that the most intelligent don't remain in little ghettos of their own social class, or get bullied out of succeeding at school

Duncan

September 30th, 2008 9:06pm Report this comment

It's all very well the Conservatives adopting Swedish education policies, but of course the Swedes pay upto 60% of their income in taxes and social security payments so the state can afford dole out money on elaborate education policies. Here in the United Kingdom we don't have such high rates of tax so how are the Conservatives going to pay for these Swedish education schemes they say that they are going to adopt?

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