Peter Hoskin

Gove pushes his agenda

If you can divert your attention away from the Ashes for a second, then I’d recommend you read John Rentoul’s fascinating interview with Michael Gove in today’s Independent on Sunday.  The two most eye-catching passages concern Gove’s “ultra-Blarism” and his thoughts on foreign policy.  The Blairism first:

“And when I ask if it is wise to paint himself as a Blairite, given the former prime minister’s latter unpopularity, he says: ‘He’s not as popular as he deserves to be, and he’s emphatically not as popular within Labour as he deserves to be – amazing ingratitude on their part. But if someone were to look at some of the views that I’ve argued and say, “Tony Blair said that”, it would be fatuous of me to deny it, and dishonest, so therefore I may as well acknowledge it because it is true.

‘If you take the Blair view on public services reform, and particularly on education, I think it’s right, and it is a pity that that trajectory was stopped. If you take the Tony Blair view on foreign policy, in terms of support for democracy abroad, then I certainly agree with that as well, but if you take certain other Blair policies, and Europe is the most conspicuous, then you can say I fall very, very far short of the high standards he set.'” And on foreign policy:

“But what about Cameron’s description of himself as ‘a liberal conservative, not a neo-conservative’? Gove, who is happy to be called a neo-con, replies: ‘Of course, people said, “Ah, that’s very different from –”. Actually, everything David has said or done on foreign policy, I have thought, “Yes, absolutely”.

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