Michael gove

I doubt David Cameron will have many better days in government than this. Considering the government cancelled a hospital project yesterday, today has passed as one long photo-op, free of incident. It began with Theresa May banning a radical Islamist cleric, Zakir Naik, displaying a resolve that eluded her immediate predecessors. The papers were full of Cameron’s ‘coup’ in Brussels yesterday; the only major news story that might have unnerved Cameron was the FT’s research into Tory immigration policy, which the FT calculates will hit growth and raise taxes. It was too esoteric to hit the TV screens, so too the cuts in arts funding. It must have been a

Polly Toynbee was on ‘mute’ on Sky News in my office, the remote wasn’t working, which is frustrating because I’d love to hear how someone mounts a passionate defence of why local government should have monopoly control of state schools. Very few things in politics are indefensible, but a system which doles out sink schools to sink estates is one of them. When Michael Gove was a journalist, he described comprehensive education as the greatest betrayal of the working class. And now, as Education Secretary, he is outlining a system that will give the poor the same choice of schools that the rich have. Who on earth could be against

It is quite telling that David Cameron’s first newspaper article since becoming Prime Minister is for the Daily Mail, and even more telling that its central message is, “you still have a Conservative Prime Minister”.  There then follows a series of reassurances about Dave’s political motivations (“I believe the state is your servant, never your master. I believe in the common sense and decency of the British people”) and about the policies contained in the coalition agreement. One line that jumped out at me, though, is this rather inspid description of the Tories’ radical school reform agenda: “We’re also giving parents, charities and other organisations the opportunity to set up

The full coalition agreement, released this morning, is fascinating enough in itself.  Here we have a step-by-step guide for how two different parties will operate together, what they will do, and, broadly speaking, when they will do it.  And, perhaps to ease the general uncertainty surrounding this type of government, it is considerably clearer than party manifestos tend to be.  One thing you can say, at least, is that this coalition appears keen to make itself more accountable. Skimming through the actual document, there seem to be few surprises, and a good handful of reviews designed to punt difficult policy areas into the long grass.  As the Times’s Francis Elliot

Today’s civil partnership between two men who look uncannily like each other will, I suspect, be remembered as a festival of misplaced optimism. Cameron overdid it a little, making out that this was his ideal outcome. It seems rude to point it out, but there were two podiums in that rose garden because he flunked the election (see Tim Montgomerie’s superlative report for details). The cost of his failure to win is having to do a deal with Nick Clegg. The country didn’t vote for a new politics: the Lib Dems did worse than last time, so polls show most voters would have preferred Cameron to have formed a minority

Here are some details of the LibCon deal, and my brief comments: 1. Clegg as Deputy PM. It’s a non-job, but a senior one – it means Clegg will take PMQs in Cameron’s absence, and will defend all those nasty cuts (sharing the blame for these cuts is the main rationale for coalition). This follows the 1999 Lib-Lab deal in Scotland, where Jim Wallace was made Deputy First Minister to everyone’s surprise. 2. Laws replaces Gove in education. This has not been confirmed yet, and I will not believe it until I see it. Of all of tonight’s moves this is potentially the most concerning – especially for all those

During coalition talks, wild rumours can fly – and some of them can be true. That’s why Michael Gove would have stopped many a Tory heart this morning by telling Andrew Marr that he was by no means wedded to a Cabinet job and then heaped praise on David Laws. The Gove schools policy is ranked by The Spectator as reason in itself to vote Tory and by The Economist as the best single policy of the election campaign. Might it be sacrificed? The 10am radio headlines were suggesting so.  I bumped into Gove just afterwards and asked him: panic over. He had simply sought to make clear that he

While both the Conservatives and LibDems support the idea of Swedish schools, a Lib-Con deal could kill the agenda stone dead. David Laws is proposing to allow local authorities to have the power to veto new schools – which would, in effect, mean no rollout. As we all know, this could strangle the Gove school agenda at birth. Local authorities, whether Labour or Tory, will hate the idea of competition in the provision of education. The local authorities and teachers’ unions are incredibly powerful, and defeated Thatcher, Adonis and Blair. They have also nobbled the LibDems to the extent that, I understand, David Laws believes that he could not get

The New Statesman has interviewed Douglas Alexander, who appeals, as Andrew Adonis has, to Liberal Democrat voters to back Labour to inaugurate what he terms a ‘New Dawn for Labour and progressive politics.’ Progressive is a vague term, but the best definition for it is reform to encourage social mobility. In this morning’s Times, former Fabian Stephen Pollard argued that only the Tories can guarantee this. For the time, Pollard says, he will vote Conservative and all because of Michael Gove’s schools reform.   ‘Mr Gove has promised that within four years of a Tory government, all parents will have the option of sending their child to an independent school

Clegg won’t join without proportional representation; Cameron says he won’t countenance such a ‘con’. Indeed, it runs deeper than that. Iain Martin has canvassed Tories from across the party and found that Cameron will get short shrift if he tries to reform the voting system at all. There is another consideration. This election has the potential to blow traditional party structure out of the water. Labour’s right will be marginalised by the unions’ grip over the party and Liberal Democrats like David Laws and Clegg (up to a point) have more in common with the One Nation Tories than they do with out and out left wingers like Kennedy and

The Spectator’s endorsement of David Cameron started with his ‘free schools’ policy – and we could have ended there. We said that this is, in itself, enough reason to vote Conservative. This week’s Economist has produced one of the best explanations of this policy, and its potential.  This is important because this election campaign shows that, while the public are indeed minded to oust Gordon Brown, they’re not terribly excited by the Tory offering. The Gove schools plan is something which, if properly expressed, cannot fail to capture the imagination. In my limited experience of persuading people why they should vote, I find the schools policy always works. The Tories,