Michael Gove is a consummate politician and he’s no fool either. There are also rumours that he is quite keen on wildlife and the countryside (though he has managed to keep this fairly well-hidden to date).
The new and dynamic Secretary of State for the Environment is about to make a speech at WWF’s HQ where he will promise, according to the BBC, ‘a Green Brexit‘ which is ‘a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reform how we care for our land, our rivers and our seas, how we recast our ambition for our country’s environment, and the planet‘.
That sounds good, and all the coverage ahead of the actual speech suggests that Gove will say some very welcome things.
He is likely to suggest that public payments to landowners must be earned by delivering public goods that the market doesn’t reward, that government should look at the sums paid to very wealthy landowners (note – this may include wildlife conservation organisations like the RSPB and NT (but less so the 47 individual Wildlife Trusts)) and that future funding should recognise good environmental practice much better. Hooray! Those are the right things to say.
We’ll have to see what the details are, and whether Defra actually follows up on this or whether the words are left hanging in the air, but it is good to have a Defra Secretary who is out there doing stuff after a long Truss/Leadsom hibernation. Gove has seen that his department has the opportunity to do something good post-Brexit that will be a good thing for the exchequor, a good thing for the taxpayer, a good thing for the government, a good thing for the Conservative Party and a good thing for Mr Gove’s ambitions. Didn’t I say he is a consummate politician?
This blog has not fallen in love with Mr Gove – we still expect this apparently good news to be balanced by some excruciatingly bad news in the future (didn’t I say he is a consummate politician? ), and that bad news might just be removal of environmental protections for sites and species post-Brexit so let’s not get too cheerful? But fair’s fair, the signs are promising on this subject and he has had the wit to spot it as an all-round opportunity (as any opportunist would).
Betfair odds for the next Conservative Party leader include: David Davis 4/1, Jacob Rees-Mogg 13/2, Philip Hammond 8/1, Boris Johnson 15/2, Andrea Leadson 24/1, Michael Gove 29/1, Rory Stewart 35/1, Liam Fox 110/1, Owen Paterson 219/1, Liz Truss 409/1. Watch Gove’s odds come down over time provided he can deliver future environmental policies that gain widespread support.
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Struggling to get over my first rule of politics: ‘never trust a Tory’, but we’ll see.
Fair comments – text is here
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-unfrozen-moment-delivering-a-green-brexit
This is the same Michael Gove who said he would work with teachers before the 2010 election to achieve education reform. (We all know how that ended up.)
On the educational curriculum, he said “What specifically concerns me [about the then educational curriculum under Labour] is an approach that denies children access to knowledge because time, and effort, is spent on cultivating abstract thinking skills rather than deepening the knowledge base which is the best foundation for reasoning. … The body responsible for our national curriculum … does not make its principal aim a guarantee – entitlement if you prefer – that each pupil will have access to a body of knowledge. Instead it outlines its hope that schools will produce “successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens” who “are physically
competent and confident”, who “sustain and improve the environment
locally and globally” and are “willing to try new things””.
After that 2010 election, we ended up with a Gove-led curriculum that emphasised a Gradgrindian “facts, facts, facts” while [almost] losing any reference to climate change – averted only after the resistance of other Government ministers; a schools policy that resulted in an ideological removal of responsibility from local authorities best placed to understand local needs; a championing of the so-called “free schools” and multi-school academy chains with much reduced public accountability and much increased emphasis on profitability; a dismissal of teachers and advisory bodies as ‘the education blob’; a handing over to private entities (from Government ownership) the buildings and land of schools that became academies and free schools.
What’s more, this is the same man who based his enthusiastic desire for leaving the European Union on what he described as EU rules causing the decimation of his father’s fishing business; a claim his own father rubbished.
The question is: do we truly believe the leopard can change his spots and thus take his latest speech at face value? Or do we reserve judgement, based on prior form, then check the fine detail of his every word and action, extrapolate to determine the worst-case scenario for environmental protection and species concern, assume that will be the outcome and therefore maintain substantial pressure on both him and as many of his fellow Conservative MPs in vulnerable constituencies as possible?
I would strongly advocate the latter approach. Praising him for tone of message at this stage only encourages him to think the entire sweep and details of his plans are being endorsed.
We all know the CAP has been a continuing disaster for wildlife and small farmers in the UK. Gove is the first Environment Secretary able to make such bold statements in favour of wildlife.
I think his record as Justice Secretary was good, too.
From Wikipedia: Secretary of State for Justice 2015–2016
After the 2015 general election, Prime Minister David Cameron promoted Gove as Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary in his newly formed Cabinet.[101] He was praised in December 2015 for scrapping the courts fee introduced by his predecessor, Chris Grayling.[102] The fee had been heavily criticised for, among other things, causing innocent people to plead guilty out of financial concerns.[103] Gove removed the 12-book limit on prison books introduced by Grayling, arguing that books increased literacy and numeracy, skills needed for making prisoners a “potential asset to society”. The move, effective from September 2015, was welcomed by Frances Cook of the Howard League for Penal Reform.[104] Gove was also praised for his prominent role in scrapping a British bid for a Saudi prison contract.[105]
Within three months of his taking office, the Criminal Bar Association voted to stop taking new work in protest at Gove’s insistence that they work for lower fees.[106] The CBA subsequently praised his “courage” in reversing the proposed cuts.[107] On 14 July 2016 Gove was removed from the position of Justice Secretary by the new Prime Minister, Theresa May.[13]”
So, let’s give the guy a chance. He is ‘talking the talk’, but can he ‘walk the walk’? For the remainers, how could the Green Party and the Lib Dems possibly hope to change the CAP?