Michael Gove is the Justice Secretary, but his speech to the Tory conference this afternoon showed that he is so much more than that – or at least that he’s interested in so much more than just his brief. The most striking thing about it was that it was a challenging speech for those sitting in the hall, rather than one where he repeatedly challenged Labour on the party’s new direction under Jeremy Corbyn.
It wasn’t just that he prompted the conference to applaud his line that it was a Conservative, not a Lib Dem, who ensured equal marriage for gay and lesbian people – which they did, with a very small number of delegates either refusing to clap or shaking their heads. It was that Michael Gove told the Conservative party conference today that ‘there is more we need to do to tackle the excesses and abuses of capitalism: abuses which undermine the system that generates so much growth and opportunity’. The Justice Secretary added:
‘It is our duty as Conservatives to be the party that most aggressively fights for economic fairness. Because there is one thing we can definitely say about the Labour Party. They are no longer on the side of working people.’
This is what should worry those Labourites who found one of Gove’s following lines, that that Tories should fight for the poorest ‘more passionately than anyone else’, funny. Gove is articulating what the Tories plan to do while Labour is fighting with itself about Trident. They will try to address the things that voters dislike about them, while occupying Labour’s traditional ground. And just because Labourites think they own the phrase ‘we care most about the poor’, doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily always hold onto it in voters’ minds – or at least that’s what Gove and his colleagues hope.
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