Michael Gove could be prime minister

Michael Gove was interesting in his interview with Iain Martin for Standpoint magazine. I am an admirer of Gove’s, and not just because I worked with him at the BBC in the early 1990s (around the time that he wrote a biography of Michael Portillo, thinking that he would be a future prime minister).

What he has done to secure and advance Tony Blair’s reforms of schools is one of the most compelling reasons for preferring the Government to the Opposition.

I am also an admirer of Iain Martin’s; his return to blogging* has provided a welcome uplift to the internet. His superb write-up of the interview asks, “Will Michael Gove Go All the Way to No 10?” Which is interesting because I had just been discussing precisely that question with a wise old hand who is no Tory but who could see it happening. After all, he said, it was quite easy to see how Boris Johnson or George Osborne might not be first choice when a vacancy arose.

Gove is one of the most courteous people I have ever met, and courtesy goes a long way in politics. Blair, for example, was a prolific writer of thank-you notes. Gove is also, as Martin notes, confident, ideological, and making a success of his department.

I do not agree with Martin’s advocacy of selection in state schools, but his exchanges with Gove about it were illuminating. Gove says of the Prime Minister:

He is a classic Tory, but also a radical meritocrat. But he doesn’t believe in academic selection. What he wants to see in state schools are the kinds of things that people pay money for — proper uniforms, classical subjects rigorously taught, and for teachers to be respected.

It is deft. Gove deflects the question of selection by saying, in the third person once removed, that Cameron doesn’t believe in it. Pressed further, Gove says:

As long as the coalition lasts I don’t think there is any room for manoeuvre. I don’t think the Liberal Democrats would countenance any form of selection. Selection is an incendiary subject in England. My view is that it’s better to avoid it because you can make much more progress in other areas. Selection is not a necessary condition of having a successful education system.

This is classy politics. I suspect that Gove agrees with the view, argued brilliantly by David Willetts when he was shadow education spokesman, that selection inhibits social mobility. But Willetts was nearly destroyed in a Tory civil war with the grammar-school mob when he made that argument explicit. So Gove chooses to be indirect, especially with an interviewer of the Graham “Grammar” Brady view.

That is what I call the cunning of leadership.

Gove also has humour on his side. He proposes this test of whether his schools policy will be judged a success:

I hope that thanks to the reforms we’ve introduced the next Guardian editor but three will be a comprehensive school boy or girl.

Against all that, there is Gove’s weakness. He is not a retail politician on television. But if he goes on doing a good job of government, that is the kind of perception that can be turned round, and his peculiarities of manner could become strengths of “a character”.

So, like the anonymous Conservative backbencher quoted by Martin, I hope Gove is lying when he says of the leadership:

No, I’m constitutionally incapable of it. There’s a special extra quality you need that is indefinable, and I know I don’t have it. There’s an equanimity, an impermeability and a courage that you need. There are some things in life you know it’s better not to try.

*There was a problem with his site’s server today. Bear with, as Miranda’s mother would say.

Photograph of Michael Gove reading A Book: Martin Godwin

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• dylanatstrumble

  A country that could elect Blair, Brown and their cabs for hire not once but three times, could admittedly be stupid enough to elect this cretin

• Guest

  We have had a campaign against cliches, may we now have one against redundant superlatives? I will make up my own mind as to whether Iain Martin’s write-ups are superb or David Willetts’ arguments are brilliant.

  I have also had enough of bloggers constructing premises based on information from anonymous sources. You would think, to read the posts of some political commenters, they are bosom buddies of half the Cabinet. If journos and bloggers won’t name names, I am entitled to conclude they are taking a flight into the realm of romance.

  David Cameron is prime minister because, like Tony Blair, he was in the right place at the right time, and seized the moment. Nick Clegg is leader of the Lib Dems and Deputy Prime Minister because he was in the right place at the right time, and seized the moment.

  Gordon Brown ultimately failed not because he lost the 2010 general election, but because he lacked the courage to seize the moment and fight the election that never was in 2007. Likewise, David Miliband failed to seize the moment and mount a leadership challenge after Mr Blair was deposed after the Brownite palace coup earlier the same year. Yes, Mr Miliband was a rank outsider at the time, but so had been Mr Cameron.

  In politics as in any other walk of life, fortune favours the brave, spits in the eye of the pusillanimous.

• http://twitter.com/pippagove Pipsqueak

   Gove will become “Dear Leader” in a new Tory age of Empire.  We have Murdies media machine, the weapons of mass destruction and soon we will control the schools…

• frenchblue

  Hardly surprising that right wing Rentoul fawns on the slimy Gove, but the prospect of this really not terribly bright throwback becoming PM? Oh, do spare us. It would make the UK a laughing stock. Or rather, even more of a laughing stock than it currently is.

• lecce

  The boy Gove should be concerned at keeping his present job. He may have aspirations to be PM but he does not appear to realise that he is not that popular within the present set up. One good thing about the Coalition could be preventing the boy achieving his goal. The bloke is a buffoon and a poltroon too boot.

• porkfright

  Could Gove become PM? Question to which the answer is “Not until Hell freezes over”.

• http://twitter.com/JeevanJones Jeevan Jones

  It seems, John, that you’re basing your prescience on someone’s charisma (though whether that applies to Gove is, of course, debatable) or way of speaking rather than anything much more substantial such as their leadership skills, or even popularity or ideology.

  I don’t think anything you’ve said in this blogpost is indicative of Gove’s leadership chances in any way, I’m afraid. Being courteous doesn’t make people prime minister, as I’m sure you’re quite aware.

• http://twitter.com/DanStayte Dan Stayte

  Why do you even write for this paper (serious question)? I’m sure you’d be more welcome at the Telegraph.

• Toffer99

  PM? He’ll need to get his eyebrows lowered first.

• Daleep Singh

  If PM stood for post-menapausal