7 Jul 2016

From strident columnist – to the very heart of government?

Britain's Conservative Party's Chief Whip Michael Gove leaves 10 Downing Street in central London, March 18, 2015. Britain's coalition goverment will today publish it's last budget before the general election on May 7. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth (BRITAIN - Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS) - RTR4TT99As Michael Gove fights for the leadership of the Conservative party – and the job of Prime Minister – his previous life as a newspaper columnist has some raising concerns about the range of views he’s expressed in the past.

In light of the Chilcot report, many are reminded of his strident columns in praise of the Iraq invasion. In February 2003 – at the height of the political argument over intervention – Michael Gove wrote this in The Times in praise of Tony Blair:

“By God, it’s still hard to write this, but I’m afraid I’ve got to be honest. Tony Blair is proving an outstanding Prime Minister at the moment.”

And in foreign policy terms, if Tory grandee Ken Clarke is to be believed, his colleague Michael Gove is a dangerous man. The veteran Conservative’s unguarded remarks in the Sky News studio might have been dismissed as a bit of witty rhetoric – but I hear they rang true among some who have worked alongside the Justice Secretary.

To recap, Mr Clarke opined that if Mr Gove became Tory leader – and indeed prime minister – “we’d go to war with at least three countries at once”.

One number Ten official told me Mr Clarke never spoke a truer word in jest, and even went as far as to claim that when Mr Gove was sacked as Education Secretary and appointed Chief Whip, Downing Street secretly introduced what some labelled “the Gove Protocol”, to stop him getting his hands on government policy.

He should have been content to busy himself with party management, but instead, my source suggests he showed a strong interest in policy.

“We had to establish a way of keeping him at bay. The guy is a demagogic populist,” the official opined. He added: “The Gove Protocol was an arrangement whereby we allowed Michael to believe that he was generally involved in policy making but in reality he was excluded from any substantive discussion of anything serious. It was fundamentally a matter of trust. It was not felt appropriate for him to have sight of anything serious because he was so fantastically leaky.”

There were two exceptions to the Gove Protocol, he says: education, where he was allowed to peer over his successor Nicky Morgan’s shoulder, and counter-terrorism where – as my source describes it – indulge his “neo-con obsessions”.

His friends say this is all grossly unfair. Mr Gove is undeniably a very clever man with a brain capable of ranging across departments and beyond. In addition, he’s put a passion for tackling inequality at the heart of his leadership campaign. Not bad for a “neo-Con”. An ally of Michael Gove pointed out that subsequent to his sacking as Education Secretary, Mr Gove was appointed justice secretary, so perhaps the view of the official wasn’t shared by the prime minister.

My source cites one cabinet meeting in particular as an example of Mr Gove’s style that crystallised minds around their efforts to keep him out of policy-making. He says there was a discussion on the privatisation of Royal Mail, and the prime minister canvassed views around the table.

When it came to Mr Gove’s turn, he is said to have launched into a lengthy tirade about the importance of privatising Royal Mail for one simple reason: the appalling service at Post Offices up and down the country.

My source says the prime minister and his colleagues listened intently, before Mr Cameron thanked Mr Gove for his “absolutely fascinating” remarks. There was just one problem: the Post Office branch network was never part of the Royal Mail privatisation.

For one of his critics sitting round the table, that highlighted the necessity of the Gove Protocol. Ideas and views which might have been just the job in Mr Gove’s former role writing newspaper comment pieces felt incongruous in government.

Of course, now that Mr Gove has put himself in the Brexit driving seat, it’s less than their dream scenario for some of the more cautious Number 10 wonks.

“He’s a columnist. He’s a wild man from the Thunderer. He’s not somebody you want want near government policy,” my Number 10 source concluded.

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