Social media and some mainstream media are all over Michael Gove’s ‘landmark’ environment speech. Here is the text.
It’s a pretty good speech but I think the signs are that it is a land-grab speech as much as a landmark one. There is so much in here about climate change and yet no-one seems to have noticed that climate change is not really a big part of the current Defra brief. I think Mr Gove wants to play in even bigger waters than he is at the moment. His speech is a bid to recreate Defra in the time of David Miliband and before climate was split off for Ed Miliband to run in DECC.
Coverage of the speech:
Of course there is quite a bit of discussion in the media about all that sucking up by Gove to the two marvellous candidates for Prime Minister, but the truth is that, as the leadership contest showed, there is not that much real talent in the Conservative potential Cabinet under Boris Johnson. Boris (or Jeremy) would be mad to lose an operator as good as Gove and since becoming Environment Secretary Gove has shown that he can knuckle down and do the ‘loyalty’ thing.
So, what job do you give Govey? Not Chancellor (Javid?) and not Foreign Secretary (Hunt stays?), so … what? This was Gove’s bid for a bigger job at the same desk. I, for one, would be happy if he got it. Well, I wouldn’t be deliriously happy but I would be content.
Who else could there be who could do the Defra job – which will be pretty important (all that food!) however Brexit plays, or fizzles, out.? Zac Goldsmith – a long time mate of Gove? He might well get a Cabinet post but he might be the one to replace the almost-sure-to-exit Rory Stewart at DFID? That would be quite interesting.
By the way, there’s nothing much about the uplands in the speech (they are a long way from London after all) but there is an interesting mention of an emerging idea from the Glover Report ‘that the current network of National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and other designated landscapes should benefit from the additional support that could be provided by a single National Landscape Service, focused on promoting wildlife, beauty and access‘ and presumably not the rampant killing of protected wildlife? Good idea! I would never claim that this was where Julian Glover and Michael Gove might have got it from, but look at this response to the Glover enquiry (Question 16) from December last year which says ‘I would like to see an English NP service somewhat along the US model which delivers access, recreation and wildlife.‘.
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