That Gove/May spat …
The meeting at which Theresa May and Michael Gove clashed over the definition of extremism was in November 2013, not this year.
After that meeting, Michael Gove went off to the PM to try to lobby for his position. This all preceded the Birmingham schools issue coming into the open.
Michael Gove is said to have wanted bodies like the Muslim Brotherhood to be included in the Home Office’s definition of extremist bodies. He felt the authorities had a pretty good idea which bodies and thinkers were associated with dangerous extremism and they should be identified.
The argument from the Home Office was that Michael Gove’s approach limited their room for manoeuvre, risked pushing individuals into feeling persecuted and being more liable to make the journey to physical force Islamism.
Michael Gove’s team argued that people needed guidance on where the line was between conservative religious practice and extremism. Theresa May’s team seemed to largely win this argument with some concessions.
Separate to this is the entire row over Birmingham schools which comes in the second page of Theresa May’s letter to Michael Gove and others.
She takes a pretty brutal swipe at Michael Gove, implying that his department was asleep on the job, missing warnings in 2010 that there was a problem with schools in the area.
This paragraph of her letter rather stands out, as it has nothing to do with the on-going inter-departmental conversation that she opens with, about a voluntary code of Ppractice for madrassas and other religious after-school classes.
It is written yesterday (when she may well have heard that Michael Gove’s thoughts as expressed to The Times) and appears to be designed for publication.
On the voluntary code for madrassas and other “supplementary schools” as they are called in the Whitehall jargon, she makes a point about how the government’s position on how “dress requirements” should be consistent with other government advice (presumably not a lot of controversy there?) and recommends that the government should consider making the code not voluntary but compulsory.
That opens up a number of questions, but it’s hard to imagine a hardliner like Michael Gove would die in the ditch to keep a voluntary code voluntary.
What you have here is two hard-liners who have clashed badly in the more distant past (Michael Gove famously slapped Theresa May down at a meeting of Conservative Cabinet ministers for going on political manouevres), but whose divisions owe more to a personal lack of respect than to any profound political differences.
Such divisions as there were over Prevent strategy between Michael Gove and the Home Office’s director of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism seem to be largely in the past.
Michael Gove has boundless intellectual self-confidence and even his closest friends in government worry that he strays too boldly and frequently into other ministers’ fiefdoms.
Theresa May’s first steps up the front bench ladder were accompanied by talk of “tokenism,” and some condescension from individuals around David Cameron. She feels she has overcome all that and is entitled to respect as a successful high level minister.
Added to that is the matter of the special advisers.
Michael Gove until recently was supported by two extremely tenacious and combative Whitehall advisers who have both decided to leave in the last few months.
Theresa May has two extremely tenacious and combative special advisers who are right beside her and, on the basis of this morning’s Times front page, very active.
One Whitehall source (not from DfE or the Home Office) said: “anything with a hint of criticism of Theresa gets stamped on (by her advisers).” The source continued: “She’s been transformed from indecisive and inconspicuous (to) obsessively ambitious … she is about the last person you want to go out into a fight like this with.”
Look at the Home Office’s central texts – like the Prevent Strategy (2011):
We believe that Prevent work to date has not clearly recognised the way in which some terrorist ideologies draw on and make use of extremist ideas which are espoused and circulated by apparently non-violent organisations, very often operating within the law.
Look at the PM’s Munich speech, said to be the Education Secretary’s central text:
“As evidence emerges about the backgrounds of those convicted of terrorist offences, it is clear that many of them were initially influenced by what some have called ‘non-violent extremists’, and they then took those radical beliefs to the next level by embracing violence. And I say this is an indictment of our approach to these issues in the past. And if we are to defeat this threat, I believe it is time to turn the page on the failed policies of the past. So first, instead of ignoring this extremist ideology, we – as governments and as societies – have got to confront it, in all its forms.”
There’s not an ocean of difference between these two positions. There are two battling politicians fiercely proud of their reputations and arguments.
One, the Home Secretary, who was pretty heedless of the wider reputation of the government in defending her own reputation in the hastily written letter. The other a gifted speaker who sometimes speaks too freely for his own good; one who wants to be leader of her party, one who would back a long list of people before he considered voting for her.
Follow @GaryGibbonBlog on Twitter