Michael gove

Portrait of the week | 13 June 2019

Home Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, a candidate for the Conservative leadership, admitted he had used cocaine several times 20 years ago. ‘I deeply regret the mistake that I made,’ he said. ‘It was a crime.’ He also said: ‘Certainly when I was working as a journalist I didn’t imagine I would go into politics.’ His admission came as the Daily Mail published extracts from a biography on Gove by Owen Bennett, due to be released next month, that relates an earlier admission of cocaine use to party colleagues. Ten candidates for the leadership started the race after Sam Gyimah withdrew: Michael Gove, Matt Hancock, Mark Harper, Jeremy Hunt, Sajid

James Delingpole

It would be weird if Gove hadn’t taken drugs

Cocaine is an abominable drug, by far the most hateful of all the various uppers and downers and psychoactives because it turns you into such a complete moron. The problem with coke, as my friend, the drug historian Mike Jay, once explained to me, is that nature never intended us to use it the way we do. In its raw, coca leaf form, it’s a handy and pleasant stimulant, just what you need to keep you going on a long trek over the Andes. But in its refined form it’s just nasty, not least because it plays a cruel, built-in trick on you. You take cocaine to get high —

Michael Gove’s plan to scrap VAT is a big mistake

When I read about Michael Gove’s plans to abolish VAT and replace it with a US-style Sales Tax, I thought: “Is he on drugs?” Gove’s views on experts have often been misrepresented. His infamous attack was aimed at a subset who haven’t been held accountable for failed predictions, not on the very idea of expertise. In fact, his scepticism of over-confident forecasts was influenced by the research of Prof Philip Tetlock, an expert on forecasting. Yet, while he isn’t the post-truth, anti-expert that his opponents paint him as, he happens to be promoting a policy opposed near-universally by tax experts. It is not often the head of Tax Justice UK and the former executive

Michael Gove tries to come out fighting after cocaine row

Michael Gove is one of those people who enjoys finding themselves with their back against the wall, fighting. His leadership launch this afternoon was mired in questions about his past drug use, but the Environment Secretary looked totally unruffled by the rows of the past few days and the questions from journalists after his speech. His was a typical Gove offering, in that it was a beautifully-written and well-structured speech. He started with his back story of being adopted and never knowing his birth mother. He set out all he has achieved so far in government, running from his passion for improving all children’s life chances through education reform, his

Steerpike

Watch: Gove’s message to Boris: ‘Don’t pull out’

The Tory leadership race is turning nasty. And not for the first time, it’s Michael Gove who is taking a pop at Boris Johnson. After a disastrous weekend for Gove that was overshadowed by revelations of drug-taking, Gove has just attempted to start afresh at his campaign launch. Gove also used his speech to take a shot at Boris. Here is his message to his rival: ‘If I get through – which I am sure I will actually – to the final two against Mr Johnson, this is what I will say to him: Mr Johnson, whatever you do, don’t pull out. I know you have before and I know

Sunday shows round-up: Michael Gove – taking cocaine was a crime I ‘deeply regret’

The Conservative leadership race continues in full force, with four contenders paying a visit to the TV studios today. Michael Gove has been making the headlines for all the wrong reasons after admitting to taking cocaine ‘on several occasions’ while he was a journalist for the Times. He expressed his remorse to Andrew Marr: MG: It was a crime, it was a mistake. I deeply regret it… I was fortunate in that I didn’t [go to prison]… I’ve seen the damage that drugs do. I’ve seen it close up, and I’ve seen it in the work I do as a politician… The mistake I made is not a mistake I

The real problem with Michael Gove’s drug admission

The problem for Michael Gove is not that thousands of Conservative party members will open their copy of the Daily Mail this morning and think to themselves: ‘Gove has taken illegal drugs, therefore he is unfit to be Prime Minister’. It is that Gove or his supporters will fall into the trap of trying to turn his admission into a virtue. How tempting it will be for them to try to say: ‘look, all Govey’s done is what millions of other students have done. That makes him a normal human being – unlike all these swivel-eyed moralists who would condemn him for it’. But that is what would be fatal

Steerpike

Michael Gove’s cocaine blues

The Tory leadership race has taken on a new turn this weekend with the Daily Mail splashing on Michael Gove’s cocaine confession. The Environment Secretary tells the paper that he took the ‘drugs on several occasions at social events more than 20 years ago’. At the time, Gove was working as a journalist. Of the experience, he says: ‘It was a mistake. I look back and I think, I wish I hadn’t done that.’ Gove goes on to say that he doesn’t think this should rule him out of the leadership race: ‘I don’t believe that past mistakes disqualify you.’ The admission comes ahead of the publication of a book

How I could get a better Brexit deal

There are things that we can do which will change the way in which we leave the European Union. I think that, critically, one of the issues that caused me particular concern has been the backstop. And it’s caused me concern for two reasons. One: as a unionist I didn’t like the idea of any part of our United Kingdom being treated differently. And secondly, as someone who wants all the benefits of a full Canada-style free trade agreement I don’t want to have some of the customs restrictions that are implicit in the backstop. At the last meeting at Strasbourg, the EU committed to working alternative arrangements that could

Tory leadership candidates start frenzied final push for support

With just a few days to go until nominations close in the Tory leadership contest, candidates are busy trying to shore up support in the parliamentary party. There are five – Sam Gyimah, Andrea Leadsom, Rory Stewart, Mark Harper and Esther McVey – who currently don’t have sufficient nominations to make it onto the ballot paper. Harper tried to get some attention by asking a question about the Peterborough by-election at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, while Gyimah has been doing the rounds in Portcullis House as MPs have trundled through. Meanwhile I understand that Rory Stewart has cancelled all his media appearances in order to hold as many meetings as

Can the Tories save themselves?

Parties don’t get rid of their leaders unless things are going very badly. But this Tory crisis is different in scale and size to anything we have seen in recent decades. The question is not whether the Tories can win the next election, but whether they can survive. The dire state that the Tories are in hasn’t put anyone off running to be leader, however. We suddenly have the most crowded field we have ever seen in a leadership race.Whoever wins will become prime minister without having to go through a general election. It’s quite a prize. Given the unpredictability of Tory contests and the frontrunners’ ability to destroy each

It’s time to send for Michael Gove

On Friday in the Spectator’s Coffee House podcast I suggested Michael Gove should be installed as a caretaker leader until June. I believe this is our best chance — perhaps our only chance — of honouring the result of the referendum. To be clear, I’m a passionate Brexiter and would like as clean a break with Brussels as possible. I want out of the Customs Union and out of the Single Market. If I was an MP, I’d be a member of the ERG. The disastrous course of the Brexit negotiations has made me more anxious to leave, not less. The fact that so many MPs and senior civil servants have

Gove vs the wood-burning stove

When I first heard rumours that Michael Gove was planning to go round the country with his environmental Gestapo, ripping out our wood-burning stoves in order to heal the planet, greenwash conservatism and reduce an imaginary 36,000 deaths a year, I must admit that a small part of me felt ever so slightly relieved. Of all the desirable accessories that I’ve coveted in my life, I don’t think any has quite disappointed me as much as the wood-burning stove now staring at me accusingly as I sit at my desk. It looks very handsome and room-furnishing, as cast-iron stoves do. And when it gets going, it really does pump out

Transcript: Michael Gove’s barnstorming speech in no-confidence debate

In the no-confidence motion today, Michael Gove gave one of the best speeches of his parliamentary career, praising Labour moderates and launching an excoriating attack on Jeremy Corbyn. Here’s an edited transcript. [This] has been a passionate debate characterised by many excellent speeches. Perhaps the bravest and the finest speech that came from the opposition benches was given by the member for Barrow-in-Furness. It takes courage – and he has it. Having been elected on a Labour mandate representing working class people to say that the leader of the party that you joined as a boy is not fit to be prime minister: he speaks for the country. And that

Matthew Parris

Leavers don’t actually want to leave

When intelligent, informed and rational people make a choice that onlookers can see confounds their own declared interests, we are wise to look to psychiatry for an explanation. This is where my thoughts turn, now that Tory Brexiteers have conspired to block Theresa May’s road from Chequers to the deal the Commons so spectacularly rejected this week. Until the last minute, I hesitated to accept the Tories’ European Research Group would join this rebellion. Cautiously I inserted ‘probably’, ‘by all accounts’ and ‘apparently’ into every column I drafted. That hardline Brexiteers would in the end want to kill the Prime Minister’s deal didn’t make sense. We Remainers have been unable

A few of my favourite things

It’s that time of year again when I put aside my wonted snark and share with you a few of my brown-paper–packages-tied-up-with-string moments so as to gladden the heart and remind ourselves that life is about more, oh so much more, than Theresa May’s crappy Brexit deal… Best friends: Michael and Sarah Gove. Many harsh words have been said about Michael and Sarah — many of them, at least in Michael’s case, by me. But the point about good friends — even when they betray every-thing you hold dear and sell your country down the river like some back-stabbing traitor — is that you love them, warts and all, and

Will no one ever take on the Green Blob?

Gosh it hurts when your little corner of paradise is destroyed by a few idiots’ ignorance and greed. This is what has just happened to one of Britain’s best-kept secrets, the magically beautiful and remarkably untouristed stretch of the Wye Valley round and about Builth Wells. Every summer we used to take a holiday let there, jumping into our favourite swim-hole in the Wye, playing Cocky-Olly in the bracken, exploring Llewellyn’s Cave, watching the last of the sun bathe the uplands from the shade of the boules terrain outside the house where we’d enjoy our well-earned fags and evening gin and tonic. But I don’t think I could bear go

Tory Brexiteers divided over how to kill off May’s deal

Will Theresa May face a vote of no confidence? Graham Brady has been touring the studios over the weekend making it clear that the full 48 letters required to trigger such a vote are yet to be received. That’s not to say it won’t happen in the near future – there’s plenty that could happen in the next week to irk MPs further – though European Research Group members seem a little down-hearted by the slow pace to proceedings. The problem is Tory Brexiteers are not united when it comes to a response to May’s EU withdrawal agreement. There are a small number of Tory Leave MPs who actually support

Diary – 4 October 2018

A weekend news report says Environment Secretary Michael Gove’s childhood has been scrutinised by colleagues ‘for clues to understanding this most paradoxical of politicians — the popular, ultra-courteous free-thinker who, by knifing Boris Johnson in the 2016 Tory leadership election, became a byword for treachery’. Gove was adopted as a baby and has never sought to meet his birth parents. He speaks fondly of the Aberdeen couple who adopted him. While the article concerned was generally favourable to Gove, the line about colleagues scrutinising his childhood jarred. It seemed to suggest childhood adoption might have inclined him to later-in-life treachery, as if that was the sad result of giving a

Michael Gove: The Prime Minister is doing a great job… at the moment

As the European Research Group breaks out in to open revolt and rumours of no confidence letters abound, it seems like Theresa May’s hold on power is looking precarious at best. So, when in trouble, send Michael Gove on the airwaves. The Environment Secretary attempted to prop up his leader with an appearance on the Today programme. Only Mr S thinks his performance only added fuel to suggestions that the jury is still out on her premiership. Speaking on Radio 4 this morning, the ever-loyal MP let slip that: ‘The Prime Minister is doing a great job at the moment’ Hardly a ringing endorsement…