How Long has Michael Gove Got?
There is a large contingent of people involved in education wondering how long Michael Gove has got left before he resigns or is sacked as the Secretary for Education.
Personally, if I was David Cameron I would let Gove know he’s on his last legs, if not let him know he will be moved in the next reshuffle, tomorrow. The continuous mistakes, corrections and errors that he and his department make are making a mockery of their ability to lead; however for me, he committed his biggest crime today with this BBC radio interview.
This was, at best, a huge PR disaster. At worst, it was a sign of a minister who has lost the debate with the public and who’s respect and authority has been undermined publicly. He’s lost the parents’ minds but-worst of all-he’s reacted awfully to it.
Gove was smug, patronising and rude. He avoided questions, deflecting them by criticising the parent for interrupting his answers. Hilariously, after so piously denouncing the caller, he later started interrupting the answers presented to him, which was noticed and wonderfully pointed out.
What angered me the most wasn’t this, though, it was the utter contempt shown towards the parent. Gove tried to use the sneaky politician’s (and I say politician’s because this is a cross-party trait) trick of trying to pull out a different story from the one being presented to him-in this case trying to insinuate that the caller did not value science. How he can so arrogantly think that he can spar with a member of the public, his electorate and-more criminally-a member of the public who is so directly affected by Gove’s changes that he was moved to call in.
I’m only grateful that this caller was intelligent and forthright enough to do what few politicians and journalists have the decency to do and to call him out on these tricks and try and have a serious measured debate on the issue. Instead, Gove wanted sound bites, you can almost literally hear the cogs working as Gove tried to get his coup de grace where he can position the parent as a liberal artsy nutter.
To Michael Gove, this wasn’t a debate about policy, this wasn’t a parent passionately explaining their concerns to him, this was sport. Such arrogance should have no place in public service, however our government, hell I’d say our whole parliament is drowning in it. Some MPs are there because they honestly believe in their ideologies and want to help and support the electorate. Many clearly are not.
We were promised an end to Punch and Judy politics yet David Cameron has outright lied with that claim, continuing rising to the bait and slinging mud and insults in opposition and to an even worse extent in power His comment today about the Miliband’s trading places was bile-inducing. It had no relation to the question asked, any issue raised and made no policy point. He couldn’t even make the slightest effort to segue into the insult, just threw it at Ed Miliband desperately. Prime Ministers Questions has descended in to a poor imitation of a Frankie Boyle show; everyone trying to outdo each other with petty, poorly constructed insults that come across to the public as bad Dad jokes being uttered by petulant 12 year old boys.
We were promised a “new politics” of no broken promises, but we still have the dog and pony show that are parliamentary debates. We still have ministers making promises and breaking them. We still have a political elite, refusing to listen to the objection put forward, even when the public are marching in the streets. Mr Clegg has either lied to us as well or simply been a complete and utter failure at being a politician with any conscience or respect for the electorate.
The fact that this arrogance, contempt and deceit is so prevalent in this parliament is why I cannot see David Cameron taking action against Michael Gove for being such a poor representative of the government. It’s a stereotypical trait of the elite that it’s not what you know, nor your ability to do the job that will get you far, but who you know. Consider the number of mistakes made by Mr Gove in hsis tenure as Secretary of State for Education and then look at the picture below. Noticing how closely knit he and the Prime Minister look, you cannot help but be absolutely certain that this government is a government of the elite, not of the people.
