Michael gove

The government machine can’t root out Islamism in prisons. Believe me, I know

In response to the Westminster attack, a 100-strong new counter-extremism taskforce has been announced to deal with the terrorist threat in prisons. I’m taking some credit for this badly needed focus. In the autumn of 2015, the then Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, asked me to lead an independent review of the threat posed by Islamist extremism in prisons, the probation service and the youth justice system. I used to be a prison governor in what was known until just a few days ago as the National Offender Management Service, so I agreed on the understanding that I reported only to him and that I had his full support to go

Inmates and Islamism

In response to the Westminster attack, a 100-strong new counter-extremism taskforce has been announced to deal with the terrorist threat in prisons. I’m taking some credit for this badly needed focus. In the autumn of 2015, the then Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, asked me to lead an independent review of the threat posed by Islamist extremism in prisons, the probation service and the youth justice system. I used to be a prison governor in what was known until just a few days ago as the National Offender Management Service, so I agreed on the understanding that I reported only to him and that I had his full support to go

A hard lesson is coming

It is one of the great mysteries of modern British politics: how public schools managed to survive three periods of Labour government with their tax breaks intact. How was it that an education secretary, Anthony Crosland, could say: ‘If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England, and Wales and Northern Ireland’, and yet do nothing to make life difficult for independent schools? Suzi Leather, Tony Blair’s appointment as head of the Charity Commission, demanded private schools do more to justify their charitable status. They upped their bursaries a bit and invited state schools to use their swimming pools every so often,

The Spectator’s Notes | 2 March 2017

Chief Constable Simon Bailey, who heads Operation Hydrant, the police investigation of ‘non-recent’ child abuse cases, now says that paedophiles who view images of child abuse should not be prosecuted, because police cannot cope with the numbers involved. Mr Bailey is wedded to the doctrine that someone who says he is an abuse victim must automatically be believed. The result, said Sir Richard Henriques in his scathing report on Operation Midland, is that the criminal justice system totters: ‘Chief Constable Bailey’s argument ignores the consequences of false terminology.’ Another consequence is that the child abuse statistics, unchecked, explode. Mr Bailey will not admit his error and so, in order to

Is Michael Gove angling for a cabinet return?

I never expected to be writing the following, since Michael Gove is, to me, one of the few heroic figures in modern politics. But he did write a very strange column in the Times last week, inciting the government to ‘Put VAT on school fees and soak the rich’. He seems to be outraged that what he calls ‘the education of the children of plutocrats and oligarchs’ is a charitable activity. Private schools get rate rebates, VAT exemptions and free uniforms, weapons etc for their cadet forces, he says. This is ‘egregious state support’. He also mocks the many bursaries provided by public schools, on the grounds that these have

Wall eyed

Any impressively long wall is bound to cause us to recall the midfield dynamo and philosopher John Trewick. In 1978 Big Ron Atkinson took his bubble-permed West Bromwich Albion team to China on some sort of goodwill tour. The lads’ diplomacy evidently rested in their feet, for when Trewick was asked by the BBC crew documenting the tour what he thought of the Great Wall, he replied: ‘When you’ve seen one wall you’ve seen them all.’ Good try, John, but not quite accurate. He would, however, have been on the money had he alluded to the common state of mind among men who commission immense walls (paranoiac) and to the

Doing Brexit right

From the start of the European Union referendum campaign, competing visions of Brexit have been advocated. To Nigel Farage, the case for leaving the European Union was all about what we did not like (the diktats, the immigration, etc). This played into the caricature cleverly presented by the Remain campaign: the shaking fist of Little England, a country that had had enough of foreigners and the tolerance that the European project represented. Then came the vision put to Britain by the Vote Leave campaign, articulated by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. It was of a globally minded Britain, fed up with the EU’s parochialism. A country itching to go out

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 19 January 2017

It is hard to be shocked by anything in these tumultuous times, but I was brought up short by the ‘attic’ headline of Tuesday’s Times, advertising the paper’s T2 section: ‘Up close and personal with Donald Trump — Michael Gove’ , it said, and continued, ‘Sex after 50: it’s fabulous’.. The earliest members of Alcoholics Anonymous offered their famous Twelve Steps, which the drunkard must take in order to recover, born of their own experience. The Twelve Steps are still the foundation of AA. They work because they are taken by people who have hit rock bottom and realise it. The first step says, ‘We admitted we were powerless over

Portland expands its horizons post-Brexit

As Michael Gove does his bit for US-UK relations in The Times today with a Donald Trump interview on the positives of a quick trade deal, his former staff, too, are on manoeuvres to boost post-Brexit business. Mr S understands that Gove’s former SpAd — and Vote Leave adviser — Henry Cook has joined Portland Communications as the PR firm’s new Associate Director. Cook joins Victoria Dean’s Brexit unit to offer advice to businesses on the opportunities the Leave vote presents. Given that Portland was once the home of New Labour — and remains the scourge of the Corbynistas — his arrival shows just how much the political landscape has changed. But while the firm was founded by Blair

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Donald Trump’s deal with Britain

It’s difficult to escape from Donald Trump’s interview with Michael Gove in the Times this morning. The president-elect’s view that he wants a quick trade deal with Britain is not only leading a number of newspaper front pages, it’s also stirring up excitement in the editorials. Here’s what the newspapers are saying: In its editorial, the Times says its interview with the ‘refreshingly candid’ president-elect should reassure us about the prospect of a Trump presidency. Take Syria, for instance: it’s true that Trump ‘clearly grasps’ the scale of the crisis there. It’s also ‘reassuring’ to hear Trump commit to a strong Nato. And the fact he wants early talks with Theresa May on

The Spectator podcast: The end of experts

On this week’s podcast we reappraise the role of experts, scrutinise the chaotic papacy, and check in with the court of King Donald. First up: In this week’s cover story, Fraser Nelson writes that the definitive quote from the referendum was one that the speaker, Michael Gove, never meant to make. In an interview with Faisal Islam, Gove was heard to claim that the British people ‘have had enough of experts’. But was that really the point that Gove was making? And, eight months on, was he actually right? Fraser joins the podcast to discuss this, along with the Spectator’s Political Editor, James Forsyth. So who should we be listening to?

My time in the ‘Naughty Corner’

An unexpected silver lining to leaving government is that I have a much nicer parliamentary office. The Chancellor’s traditional room in the House of Commons is rather dank and gloomy, with peeling ceiling plaster. Despite repeated efforts by pest control, it is overrun with moths. As a backbencher, my new office is, by contrast, a large, bright room overlooking the Thames and the London Eye. The office used to belong to David Davis, who was — rather reluctantly, I understand — forced to vacate it on entering government. So far I have resisted the jovial advice from various fellow MPs to have my new room swept to make sure it

Unforgiven

Now that almost six months have passed since the EU referendum, might it be time for old enemies to find common ground? Matthew Parris and Matt Ridley, two of the most eloquent voices on either side of the campaign, meet in the offices of The Spectator to find out.   MATTHEW PARRIS: Catastrophe has not engulfed us yet, it’s true. But I feel worse since the result, rather than better. I thought that, as in all hard-fought campaigns, you get terribly wound up and depressed when you lose. Then you pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start all over again. But my animosities — not just towards the Brexit

James Forsyth

A year of revolution

Few years will live as long in the memory as 2016. Historians will ponder the meaning and consequences of the past 12 months for decades to come. In the future, 180-odd years from now, some Zhou Enlai will remark that ‘it is too soon to say’ when asked about the significance of Brexit. The referendum result shocked Westminster. Michael Gove was so sure it would be Remain that he had retreated to bed on the evening of 23 June and only found out Leave had won when one of his aides telephoned in the early hours of the morning. Theresa May admits in her interview with us on p. 26 that

Brexit’s breaking points

Trying to write the first draft of history on the EU referendum and the leader-ship mess that followed had both its dramatic and its comic elements. My phone never stopped ringing with Eurosceptics keen to tell me why their contribution to a meeting that had previously escaped my notice was the decisive factor in securing victory. But when a vote is so close — 52 per cent to 48 per cent — then it would not have taken much to push the result the other way. Donald Trump’s victory adds some credence to the idea that Brexit was pre–ordained, part of a wave of history. But the campaign turned on

Perhaps Michael Gove should get the Turner Prize

It is a week where you’d imagine most British politicians would be occupied by the Supreme Court ruling over Brexit. But late last night and in the early hours of this, two members of the last government found time for a spat about art on Twitter. Former Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove said the Turner Prize had ‘nothingtodowithJMWTurnersgenius’ and that contemporary art was basically all ‘#modishcrap’, showing off his art expertise by misspelling winner Helen Marten’s name. Former arts minister Ed Vaizey stood up for the prize, and acknowledged that ‘brilliant’ contemporary artists could and did exist. The argument, of course, is an old one: older than the Turner

Gove struggles to compete with Boris

Spare a thought for Michael Gove. While his fellow Brexiteer Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign came to an abrupt end thanks to Gove challenging him, in the end it was the former mayor who found himself in the Cabinet and Gove who ended up on the backbench. Now it seems that Boris has had the last laugh once again. The latest register of interests shows Gove is earning £150,000 a year for his Times column. In comparison, Johnson’s Telegraph column earned him £247,000 a year. Well, at least Gove has a book on the way to help make ends meet.

Is patriotism a virtue?

Michael Gove makes a semi-persuasive case for patriotism in The Times this week. Brexit and Trumpism are largely just assertions of the basic, healthy human impulse to love one’s homeland, and to defy the international structures, and liberal sneering, that denigrate this impulse. The reality is that the moral status of patriotism depends on which nation you belong to. It depends whether your nation espouses liberal values. If it does, then your patriotism is linked to a wider-than-national creed. If it does, then your allegiance is also to an international cause: you respect and love your country as a particular expression of this creed. After fascism, the idea of national allegiance

James Forsyth

Tory Brexiteers pressure May to quit EU single market and customs union

Normally, the Saturday before an autumn statement would be dominated by speculation about what is in it. But, as I say in The Sun today, both Number 10 and the Treasury are emphasising that while there’ll be important things on productivity, infrastructure and fiscal rules in Wednesday’s statement, there’ll be no rabbits out of hats. Partly, this is because of  Philip Hammond’s personality: he’s not a political showman. But it is also because he’s not got much room for manoeuvre.  As he has emphasised to Cabinet colleagues, the growth forecasts might not be dramatically lower than they were in March, but cumulatively they have a big effect—limiting what the government

What the papers say: ‘Bone headed’ Labour and why it’s right to reform the Lords

Labour’s confused stance on immigration riles the tabloids in today’s papers – with the party’s position described as ‘bone headed’ in the Daily Express. Meanwhile, prison reform is on the agenda elsewhere, as the Guardian says Liz Truss should release the thousands of prisoners still locked up despite serving more than their minimum sentences. But whatever is done to sort out the mess of Britain’s prisons, it’s no time to make them more comfortable for inmates, says the Daily Mail. Here are what the papers are saying this morning: The Sun hits out at Labour in its editorial this morning, saying the party’s policy on immigration shows what a mess the opposition