Following David Cameron’s apparent agreement to Michael Gove’s proposal for a new royal yacht, an Early Day Motion (EDM) has been put forward by MPs supporting the idea. Having already gathered 19 signatures, predominantly from Conservative MPs, it will continue a debate which wiser Tory hacks would have buried. The EDM calls for: “the Government to appoint a Minister [...]
Michael Gove has jumped to the defence of his wife, Times columnist Sarah Vine, after commenting on his colleague Louise Mensch’s breasts and comparing her to former glamour model Katie Price. In a break with the Victorian era, Gove said that he supported the right of women “to have their own views”. Mensch is reported to [...]
Watch as children fall asleep to Gove’s lecture on school reform policy. At least Ed Balls played the drums.
An email obtained by Political Scrapbook provides yet more evidence of the friendship between Michael Gove and the man charged by Rupert Murdoch with mopping up the hacking scandal, Joel Klein. After Klein described the education secretary as a “hero” at a conference in January, a departmental email reveals Gove responded by sending “a little something” to [...]
The Guardian today published a leaked email in which a close aide to Michael Gove fiercely rebukes attempts by a civil servant to obtain transparency from a charity paid £1,000,000 of taxpayers’ money to administrate Gove’s “new schools” programme. News of smoke and mirrors at the Department for Education will come as no shock to [...]
At loggerheads with the conservation bodies such as the National Trust, planning minister Greg Clark has said the government would not back down on controversial plans to make it easier to build houses. Doubtless Clark is hoping everyone has forgotten about his 2006 private members’ bill — which, erm, tried to make it harder to [...]
Department for Education emails leaked in today’s Guardian reveal how key government work has been farmed out to partisan allies of Michael Gove at the controversial New Schools Network. But this isn’t the first time the secretary of state has attempted to bypass his own department’s civil servants. Back in March, as we reported, Gove [...]
Following up on a Political Scrapbook report from July, the new issue of Private Eye features an interesting angle on Michael Gove’s relationship with high level directors in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Last year, News Corp purchased Wireless Generation, a company which makes teaching assistance software, and hired former New York schools Chancellor Joel Klein [...]
