Michael gove

The Coalition is merely cohabiting now – that much has been clear for a while. But one partner doesn’t seem to acknowledge quite how unreasonable its behaviour is. The Lib Dems have been cheesing off the Tories with what have appeared to be an increasing number of increasingly heated attacks: from David Laws wading into the Ofsted row to Ed Davey attacking ‘diabolical’ and ‘wilfully ignorant’ Tories, and from even ‘native’ Danny Alexander making dire (but specific) threats about his dead body and taxation to Nick Clegg describing George Osborne’s call for further cuts in welfare spending after 2015 as a ‘monumental’ mistake. But today at his monthly press conference,

Michael Gove has been practising one of his favourite sports: winding up Simon Cowell. Last year, the education secretary lambasted the music mogul for encouraging youngsters to live the X-Factor dream at the expense of their studies. Today, Gove got even more personal when speaking on LBC: ‘I issue this challenge to Simon now. I don’t think he will find a better school to send his child to than the British state schools that I can show him. I think that as someone who, to his credit, has absolutely no airs and graces, I think that he would recognise that state schools in this country are now better than ever.’

The pegs are definitely coming out of Michael Gove’s education big tent, although it’s not just the Secretary of State who is pulling them out. Time was when Stephen Twigg could only make strangely consensual-yet-critical humming noises at the despatch box during departmental questions. Now Tristram Hunt is able to find sufficient difference between his education policies and Gove’s to go on the attack at these sessions, and Gove can snap back about the quality – rather than complete absence – of Labour’s education policy. At today’s education questions, Hunt attacked on Ofsted: not just the row about Sir Michael Wilshaw, but on whether academies and free schools should be

Downing Street comms supremo Craig Oliver texted ‘could this be the start of a beautiful new relationship?’ to a Telegraph executive when Tony Gallagher departed as editor of the once staunchly Tory broadsheet. It seems that Michael Gove did not get the memo, though. Gove dropped by Telegraph towers on Buckingham Palace Road yesterday to give an interview, after which his government chauffeur contrived to drive his car into the side of the building – something many an MP must wish they could do after the Telegraph-led expenses scandal. A witness tells me: ‘he actually dealt with it very well’. After checking on his driver, Gove cracked a joke about

Apparently there’s some sort of anniversary coming up to do with a war, you may have noticed. To commemorate this the British publishing industry has launched a ferocious selling offensive, no doubt aided by recent remarks from Michael Gove, Tristram Hunt and Boris Johnson. Like with any historical incident, our views of this conflict are more about now than then, 2014 rather than 1914, perfectly illustrated by the German Foreign Minister’s hugely helpful comment that Ukip is a threat to European peace – helpful to Ukip, that is, since the intervention of continental politicians inevitably helps euroscepticism. (Historically it makes no sense, because there are a number of reasons why

Michael Gove’s speech today was, as James explained at the weekend, a pitch from the Tories to be the optimists of the 2015 election. He wanted to have a little boast about the success of the government’s education reforms in raising the desirability of a state education. He said: ‘When Channel Four make documentaries about great comprehensives – academies – in Essex and Yorkshire, when BBC3 make heroes out of tough young teachers, when even Tatler publishes a guide to the best state schools – you know tectonic plates have started to shift.’ This is hardly the running down of teachers or state schools that Gove’s critics like to complain

David Laws’ attack on his former BFF Michael Gove is leading the news bulletins today, and rightly. Its wider significance lies in that the Liberal Democrats have decided it’s time to start picking fights not just with Tories in general but Michael Gove in particular. So Gove, having offered all that hospitality to David Laws, finds the guy he thought was his clansman wield the dagger on the instructions of his commander. This isn’t quite Westmister’s equivalent of the Glencoe Massacre, but the dynamics of the coalition have changed – in precisely the way that James Forsyth outlines in his political column this week. The LibDems’ support halved soon after

Finally, Britain’s children will be equipped for the Internet age. In a speech to the BETT education conference today, Michael Gove announced the details of the new computing curriculum, which will take effect from this September. As well a new Computer Science GCSE and a beefed-up A-Level (hopefully more schools will offer it), the new computing curriculum will begin for five year olds, and will consist of three strands. These are information technology (how to use computers in the real world), ‘digital literacy’ (confidently and safely using computers) and ‘computer science’ strands. The Computer Science strand is by far the most important. Since computers became significantly easier to use in

While Michael Gove and academic lefties continue to row about the causes of the Great War, the education secretary’s wife, Sarah Vine, has helpfully poured some fuel on the fire. Vine’s always-mischievous Mail column reveals that her husband admires the Germans: ‘While I wasn’t looking, my husband, Michael Gove, appears to have declared war on Germany. This has prompted some commentators to compare him to Basil ‘Don’t mention the War’ Fawlty. This is understandable, but wrong: he actually loves Germany and all things Teutonic, from Richard Wagner to bratwurst.’  She mentioned it once; but I think she got away with it.