Nine reasons to like Michael Gove

So farewell then, Michael Gove, reshuffled from the Department of Education to become government Chief Whip. I hope The Spectator’s James Forsyth is wrong in arguing that ‘the move is a big blow to the education reform agenda’, and that his colleague Isabel Hardman is more accurate when she writes:

Left-wing teachers who opposed Gove’s reforming agenda might be celebrating, but it is absurd to suggest that his move to chief whip – itself a big job – is a ‘scalp’ for the unions. Gove’s reforms have already been enacted. He has got everything done that he wanted. He has succeeded, and can move on.

I make no secret of the fact that I’m a fan of Michael Gove. I get irritated at the avalanche of abuse directed at him, and at what Frank Furedi correctly identifies as ‘Govephobia’, the way that expressing hatred of Gove ‘works as a kind of password that grants one entry into the inner circle of polite society’, a ritualised way of ‘establishing one’s moral distance from the modern personification of evil’. As anyone who works in the sector will be aware, this is particularly true of educators, at whatever level:

It’s as if Govephobia now provides many teachers and educators with a kind of corporate identity. The very mention of Gove’s name in a meeting is guaranteed to raise a collective smirk and the knowing shaking of heads. Saying something awful about Gove provides a person with the shining moral status that comes with being on ‘the right side’. Not only do you have permission to despise Gove – you are expected to express your emotions publicly whenever you can.

Of course, implacable hostility towards individuals who symbolise everything you dislike in the opposing party is not unusual in the tribal world of British politics, and it helps to have a single syllable surname that fits easily on a placard and can be spat out with appropriate venom on demos. (Mind you, the Left’s dislike of Tories like Gove is as nothing compared to the hatred they reserve for one of their own who is perceived to have betrayed the true gospel: think of the malice with which they utter that other single-syllable name – ‘Blair’.) 

But it’s when people who should know better join in with the ritual Gove abuse that I get particularly annoyed. I’m talking about those who, like me, are passionate about education and about extending educational opportunity, but for some reason see Michael Gove, who is equally passionate about these things, as an enemy rather than a kindred spirit. I’m not talking here about legitimate criticisms of Gove’s policies, some of which I share, but about sweeping dismissals of his entire reform agenda and often willful and ignorant misunderstandings of his intentions. In this category I would place those who seem to think Gove’s aim is to shore up educational privilege and deny access to learning to the poorest in society – when the opposite is actually true. It’s as if some people, blinded and deafened by a tribal dislike of everything Tory, are unable to see what’s in front of their eyes or to hear what the man is actually saying.

So, rather than getting into further endless and mostly pointless arguments on Facebook and Twitter, I thought I’d share with you nine reasons why I like Michael Gove:

(1) 

He has unashamedly continued the reform agenda set in motion by Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis. Now, when New Labour were in power, I was often critical of aspects of their educational policy. I thought the emphasis on choice was a chimera when what most parents, including me, really wanted was the guarantee of a good, local school. However, I’ve changed my mind and have come to believe, with Michael Gove, that real reform was not going to occur – standards and aspirations for all children were not going to be substantially raised – while local authorities maintained their monopolistic stranglehold on state education, and that freeing schools from LEA control – whether by converting them to academies, or founding new ‘free’ schools – was perhaps the best way forward.

(2) 

More generally, Michael Gove is an admirer of Tony Blair, and has said that he regards Blair’s memoir A Journey as a kind of manual for government. I know this won’t endear him to those on the Left who still regard Blair as a traitor to the good old cause (rather than the most popular Labour prime minister ever, the man who introduced the minimum wage, devolution, increased education and health spending exponentially, brought peace to Northern Ireland, freed Sierra Leone and Kosovo, etc…..), but still…

(3) 

Gove is a passionate opponent of the knowledge-lite leveling-down low-aspiration culture that has gripped the education sector for the past quarter of a century, and that has become entrenched in the teacher training colleges, teaching unions and the Department of Education. Instead, he believes in raising educational standards for all children, not just the privileged, and in extending educational opportunities, as a means of improving social mobility and overcoming inequality.

(4) 

Unlike some of the philistines and utilitarians who have filled the post of Education Secretary, Gove actually believes in the value of education for its own sake. Remember his brave defence of teaching ‘French lesbian poetry’ in response to the Gradgrindian businessman who scoffed at the uselessness of the humanities? He reads books too – proper books – including the kind of books people on the Left like to read: for example, he’s been known to quote from Jonathan Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes and Raphael Samuel’s The Lost World of British Communism (see the video at the end of this post). 

(5)

As the above shows, this is a man who understands the Left. I think I read that he supported Labour as an undergraduate. Indeed, some would argue that, in other times, he would have been a natural Labour politician.

(6) 

Moving away from education, Michael Gove has written, in Celsius 7/7, one of the best books you’ll come across on terrorism, the Middle East, and the West’s response. He’s also on the Council of the Henry Jackson Society, and anti-totalitarian leftists and liberals should find in him a natural and sympathetic ally. That’s why some of us think he would make an excellent foreign secretary.

(7) 

He’s genuinely funny. I know some like to mock his pratfalls, his odd facial expressions and, most recently, his love of rap, but they miss the point: he’s sending himself up. This is a politician who most definitely can laugh at himself. The first time I saw him face-to-face was in a hotel corridor, engaged in a balloon fight with one of his young children. Which brings me on to:

(8)

He’s a nice guy. OK, not a reason to like his politics, but I thought I’d include it anyway. The above mentioned encounter took place when we found ourselves two doors along from the Gove family in a Portuguese hotel a few years ago. He wasn’t so well known then, and I hadn’t really been following his career until that point, so I didn't pluck up the courage to speak to him. But I had the opportunity to observe him over a number of days, at the next table in the restaurant, reading by the pool (we were reading the same Lisbon-based thriller,) and he came across as an affable and likeable family man.

(9) 

And following on from the above – he’s also a Lusophile. As he once said, a love of Portugal is the only thing he has in common with George Galloway. Me too.

A number of Gove's qualities are on display in this very civilised discussion with David Aaronovitch, who makes an ideal interlocutor. Pity the same can't be said for the people asking questions at the end, who respond to Gove's thoughtful attempts to reach out to his left-leaning education sector audience with crass political pointscoring. I've no doubt in my mind who has the better arguments.

The week in links

Here's a few things you might have missed over the past seven days.

Khaled Mattawa makes a powerful case for intervention in Libya, while Michael Rubin urges President Obama to step up to the plate. Mark Bahnisch critiques the Left's take on Libya. Alan Johnson and Michael Walzer exchange views on intervention, and Michael J. Totten asks the Arab world for something in return. And Josh Rogin provides a fascinating insight into why the White House changed its mind on the no-fly zone. When the UN finally does the right thing, the people of Benghazi celebrate.

Meanwhile, the Arab spring spreads. Next stop Damascus? Malik Al-Abdeh reports on the first signs of revolt in Syria. Looks like there might not be too many more fawning photoshoots for Vogue, Mrs. Al-Assad.

Further east, Shehrbano Taseer, the brave and outspoken daughter of murdered liberal politician Salman Taseer, discusses the state of things in Pakistan, in a three part interview. And speaking of brave young women: Harry's Place reports on the worrying arrest and interrogation of Iranian poetess Hila Sadighi.

In the aftermath of the savage murder of a  young Israeli family in Itamar, Claire Berlinski reflects on writing about terrorism. Meanwhile, a report on IDF soldiers and paramedics at the same settlement saving the life of an Arab mother and baby gives the lie to the nonsense of 'Israel Apartheid Week'.

Finally, back home, Nick Cohen and Rob Marchant reflect on Labour's prospects in the light of Ed Miliband's performance as leader and his brother David's recent speech.

Royalty, reactionaries and revolutions: some brief recommendations

OK, so it's been a bit quiet around here for a little while. Trouble is, whenever I get round to almost-posting about something, I find somebody else has already been there, done that, and usually better than I could. Or I put it off to a time when I'm less preoccupied, and then the moment has passed, and the world has moved on (and it's all moving so quickly at the moment...).

So in the absence of anything new from me (and I will try to do better, honest), here's what I think you should be reading elsewhere (if you haven't done so already):

A brace of articles from Hitch. One on human rights organisations finally noticing that the worst abusers of human rights in Afghanistan might not be NATO troops. And a couple of pieces on truth and fiction in The King's Speech. I wish the film well at the Oscars on Sunday, but I think Hitch is right to remind us of the historical facts, and to pour a bit of cold water on the sentimental monarchism that the movie is in danger of engendering.

Bob has a great post on the reactionary nature of Ken Livingstone's mis-named 'progressive' alliance for London.

Difficult to keep up with the pace of events in North Africa and the Middle East, but Michael Weiss is good on Gaddafi, and Michael J. Totten has re-posted his revealing report on his visit to Libya a few years back.

For the latest from Libya, this site seems fairly reliable, and Mona Eltahawy continues to do a great job of pulling together all the news from the democratic awakening in the Arab world.

Van Morrison: mastery and misanthropy

Added to my Amazon wish list: Greil Marcus' new book, Listening to Van Morrison. In yesterday's Guardian, Marcus described his experience of touring cities in America, reading from the book:

Usually, when a writer shows up at a bookstore and reads from or talks about a book he or she has written, people ask questions: how do you write? Where do you get your ideas? What made you write this book? But not this time. This time, in San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, people weren't necessarily interested in my stories about Morrison. They wanted to tell their own stories.

According to Marcus, many of those stories revolved around a 'fundamental contradiction: that they could be so moved by, so caught up in, something made by someone who seemed to want nothing to do with them'. One example will serve to illustrate the paradox of Van the Man's ability to move audiences - and his notorious misanthropy:

'We went to a show,' a man said in Portland, 'and it was magnificent. It seemed like there was nothing. He was finding songs inside the songs, songs we'd never heard, it was like they were songs he never head. When it was over, we went next door to a bar, a lot of people who'd been to the show were there, and of course that's all we were talking about. How great it was, and did you notice this and did you hear that - and then Van Morrison walked in. He came in, walked to the bar, everyone stood up and applauded, and he just sat down at the bar. Finally I got up the nerve. I went over to him, and I said: "Mr Morrison, your music has meant so much to me. Sometimes it pulled me through, when I didn't think anything would. I couldn't live without it." He waited for me to finish, and he looked at me, and he said: "Why do people feel they have to tell me these things?"

On the other hand, Marcus recounts this gem of a story:

'I was talking to my father today,' a woman in Portland said. 'He asked what I was doing tonight, and I told him I was going to hear someone talk about a book he'd written on Van Morrison. "Oh, Van Morrison!" he said. "You know, I used to work with his father on the docks in Belfast. After work he'd take me to his house to listen to his records. I'd never seen anything like it. Hundred and hundreds of 78s and LPs, jazz, blues, country music, everything. And there'd be the little boy there, dancing around the room, saying play that, Daddy! Play that!'

I came to Van Morrison quite late. I was already in my mid-20s, and living in Manchester, when an older friend introduced me to his music. I'd soon bought all the early albums, and they became part of the soundtrack of my life as I left university, started my first job, got married. H. and the children have never quite shared my enthusiasm for Van, though putting 'Moondance' or 'Caravan' on in the car will usually meet with general approval. For me, it's Astral Weeks that still has a special place in my affections, recalling particular times and places, and I never tire of it.

Here's the title track, perfect for waking up to on this summer Sunday morning:

Don't say you weren't warned

(Via)

Brown's blunder

I was going to add write something long and portentous about Bigotgate this morning, but as very occasionally happens, commentators in the mainstream media have got in first and said most of what I wanted to say. Andrew Rawnsley is good on what the gaffe tells us about Gordon, John Harris analyses the incident as a reflection of the current state of Labour, and Steve Richards provides some insight into how on earth Brown and his aides could let it happen.

I'll just add a few thoughts of my own.

Above all, the affair leaves me with a profound feeling of sadness. Sadness mostly for Gillian Duffy, whose life has been turned upside down by a ravenous media machine, and whose look of deep hurt and bewilderment when reporters conveyed what Brown had said about her is my abiding image from yesterday. Sadness, too, for the thousands of Labour party workers whose desperate efforts to claw back some ground in this peculiar election have been betrayed by their leader.

And I suppose some sadness for Brown, whose brief time in the top office has been overshadowed by disappointment and decline. A BBC reporter yesterday described him as a Nixonian figure, and you can see what he meant: hungry for power, resentful of those who denied it to him for so long, then when he finally achieved his ambition, brought down by his own tragic flaws. And Gordon with his waxen smile facing telegenic, smooth-talking Nick and Dave in debate is a bit like Tricky Dicky sweating under the lights in the debates with Kennedy in 1960.

The key difference, of course, is that neither Cameron nor Clegg is JFK. The former was a Thatcherite apparatchik, forced to tack to the centre by the success of Tony Blair, who now has the gall to describe New Labour's period in office as 'thirteen years of failure'. The latter is a political lightweight who (as yesterday's halting, bumbling interview on Radio 4's PM confirmed) is not ready for high office. And, pace Andrew Sullivan (of whose blog I am an avid and usually admiring reader, but whose off-key comments on this election have shown how perilous it is to analyse political events 3,000 miles away - it will certainly make me warier of commenting on events in the USA), Clegg is no Obama (I liked this from Richard Adams). In a time of recession and war, are we seriously thinking of trusting the nation's future to an unexamined unknown just because he performs well on TV?

There's a temptation to dismiss the frenzy surrounding Gordon's gaffe as so much media froth. But, like it or not, in a media-driven election, when the issues seem so complex and the differences between the parties so slight, these stories often help to crystallise opinion more than policy debates. As with Barack Obama's careless campaign remark about people 'clinging to guns and religion', which made him look like a liberal elitist, they tend to confirm existing suspicions rather than dramatically changing opinions. Brown's treatment of Gillian Duffy seemed to bear out rumours about a quick-tempered and defensive leader with a tendency to blame others for his own blunders. At the same time, the incident appeared to provide a dramatic enactment of one of the underlying themes of this election: that Labour has lost touch with its working-class base and become tone-deaf to its concerns.

Obama had months to recover from his gaffe, and he was already ahead in the polls. The latest opinion surveys show Labour trailing behind the Tories and the Lib Dems, and the election is only a week from today. Brown's apology apparently came too late to win Mrs.Duffy back to Labour, and whatever remedial work the party undertakes in the next few days may not be enough to win back the majority of the population.

An afterlife for Democratiya?

Newly added to the blogroll: 'Arguing the world', a new blog from the folks at Dissent, with some help from writers from the disbanded Democratiya. Looks like it might go some way to assuaging the grief of those of us who bemoaned the absorption of the latter into the former. I know unity is strength, and so forth, but Democratiya was the best thing to happen in British political journalism for ages, and being part of a US magazine, however noteworthy, is not the same as having a distinctively British progressive anti-totalitarian voice.

There are good things on the new blog already from familiar names such as Alan Johnson and Martin Bright. Good, but tantalisingly brief. Perhaps they're intended as tasty morsels to tempt our palates and more substantial pieces will appear in time. I hope so, otherwise I shall continue to miss my regular fix of Democratiya.

Schlock and awe

The caption alongside this image (entitled 'Shock and Awe') in yesterday's Sunday Times described it as an example of its creator Richard Hamilton's 'acute protest art'. Acute? Art? It's less subtle than Steve Bell on a bad day. There's no ambiguity, no originality, no nuance: just a trite encapsulation of a tired political stereotype. And yet this is the person whom Waldemar Januszczak praises in the accompanying article as 'the most important British artist currently at work'. Janusczak is positively giddy with excitement at the fact that, despite his age, Hamilton 'is an artist who cannot be tamed or brought into line':

Here he is, 88 years young, still turning down knighthoods and MBEs, still winding up 'The Man' at every opportunity he gets, still belting out the protests like a teenage agitator at a Trafalgar Square rally.

What a rebel. It won't surprise you that Januszczak is particularly thrilled about Hamilton's typically monochrome take on Middle East politics:

Given what he is saying here about the behaviour of Israel, don't be surprised if Mossad sends a squad of tennis players into Britain in the next few weeks to discuss Wimbledon with him. Which reminds me, where did I put my passport?

Gosh, Waldemar: having a go at Mossad, how daring. The truth is, whether his subject is Britain, Northern Ireland or the Middle East, Hamilton can never be accused of taking time to see both sides of the question, if a one-sided cartoon will grab a bigger headline, and appeal to posturing armchair rebels like Januszczak.

In another throwaway sentence, the art critic compares Hamilton's Blair picture with his early portrait of High Gaitskell, 'his fellow betrayer of Labour principles'. It's just another symptom of what Jeff Weintraub labels Blair Derangement Syndrome. As Jeff says, 'there are serious reasons why people might disagree with Blair's policies and his political style or even condemn them':

But in many cases these feelings about Blair go beyond serious moral and political criticism and slide over into the real of pervasive, all-consuming, obsessional, and even hysterical hostility.

An hysterical hostility to which Britain's cultural commentariat seems particularly prone.

Gosling, Glenn Beck and euthanasia

I have to admit, I’m not a huge fan of Ray Gosling. I understand he’s been a great champion of gay rights, which I applaud. But to me, he’s always been one of those irritatingly quirky Radio 4 'characters' with the kind of regional accent that the Crispins at the BBC just adore, but whose quirkiness and regionalism often seem to be the sum total of his u.s.p. And the style of his programmes can best be described as whimsical. Whimsy is what Radio 4 does instead of humour: tune in any weekday evening at 6.30 and you’ll see what I mean.

At the same time, I have an instinctive aversion to euthanasia. Maybe it’s the lapsed Catholic in me, or maybe it's just the usual catalogue of fears about eugenics, the rights of the disabled, and slippery slopes. But I can’t help feeling a sliver of sympathy for Gosling, who has revealed in an interview that he once helped a lover who was suffering from AIDS to die. The veteran broadcaster has now been interviewed by the police, but has refused to disclose any further details. Listening to the news reports, I found myself silently cheering Gosling on, despite myself. You have to feel sorry for the detectives in this case, though: compelled to investigate an offence against an unnamed victim on an indeterminate date, at an unknown location, where the only evidence is the confession of a man who won’t say any more.

Or perhaps the ‘crime’ never took place, and the whole episode is a clever means of attracting publicity for the pro-euthanasia cause? Even if it did happen as Gosling says, there can surely be no selfish motive in coming clean now, and maybe the whole thing is motivated by a desire to advance the mercy-killing cause?

Maybe I’m being paranoid: but not as paranoid as Glenn Beck, who exceeded even his own reputation for fearmongering foolishness on his radio programme this week, when he suggested that ‘progressives’ in Canada plan to kill off those with a 'poor quality of life’ and that the Obama administration will soon be following suit. If you can bear it, listen to the audio version for the full unhinged rant.

Everyone's got talent

Amid all the doom and gloom about university funding cuts, there is one bit of educational good news today. According to Education Guardian, the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth is to be scrapped and its funds redirected to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds get into higher education.

And about time too. For those who are not parents of school-age children, or who remain unaware of this inequitable and divisive scheme, this is how it works (or rather, how this particular parent has witnessed it working over the past few years). Each year, schools select from among their pupils those they decide have a particular 'gift' or 'talent' - whether in music, science, sport, whatever - and use the funding allocated by government under the scheme to organise special activities for them. Various attempts have been made to reduce the appearance of elitism and selection-by-the-back-door: in some cases the definition of 'gifted' has been widened to include special educational needs, and some schools (such as the one our daughter attends) have invited parents to identify their children's special 'talents'. And there's a lot of empty rhetoric to the effect that 'everyone is gifted and talented, really' (try telling that to the children whose names are not on the list).

What you end up with, inevitably, is a group of children selected on the dubious basis of teachers' subjective judgements and parental pushiness. Like the current system of secondary school 'choice' (in practice, schools choosing the pupils they want, not vice versa), it looks open and equitable, but is in fact deeply divisive, favouring the precocious over the plodding, the already well-supported and resourced over those whose 'talents' are slow in developing or in need of nurture before they become apparent.

And once you've selected your elite group, you divert previous teacher time and resources to providing them with opportunities that reinforce their 'specialness' and are, inevitably, denied to those who didn't make the cut. One day last year, my teenage son came from school and told us there had been a special seminar on applying for Oxbridge. The trouble was, he didn't get invited, since (although he's bright and does well at school), it was only for members of the gifted and talented group, of which he's not a member. I was livid. Having been a shy, late-developing teenager myself, one who would never have been noticed by anyone drawing up a list of the 'gifted and talented', and coming from a family where no one had ever been to university, I would never have made it into higher education, let alone to the Cambridge college where I ended up, if this system had pertained in my day.

The diversion of money from this wrongheaded scheme into widening access to university is one of the Brown government's rare egalitarian moves, and almost (but not quite) makes up for Peter Mandelson's Gradgrindian comments on higher education last year.