Gove is Causing Mayhem: A Pointer

Well alright, au fond it's May's weakness that is causing mayhem - but the form it seems to be taking just now is Gove's increasingly reckless leadership manoeuvres.

First, we are plausibly told, Murdoch required that May take Gove back on board.  A conspiracy theory, I realise, but hard to disbelieve.  With his Murdoch-mandate for a putsch in his back pocket, how is he to make progress, when it has been generally agreed between the circling barons and their factions that Now Is Not The Time?  Answer: to stake out noisily the old pre-2010 Cameroonian position.  Brand-detoxification + husky-hugging.

His pretext?  In the present state of cabinet anarchy he barely needs one.  But he was handed one on a plate when (as we are told**) May's new chief-of-staff Gavin Barwell instructed cabinet members to come up with policy initiatives that don't cost any money (not itself a bad idea, as Mr Quango has pointed out).  Sajid Javid - another wannabe who's keen to be in the news - rushed in with his house-lease intervention.

http://www.cityunslicker.co.uk/2016/07/the-genius-that-is-gove.html

 

But Gove has outshone everyone with two crass, would-be populist performances in as many days.  Yesterday - in a move that must have been, ooh, at least a week or so in the hatching - he came up with the banning of new internal combustion engines by 2040 - the French wheeze.  Did he think that'll cost nothing for a year or two?  Only if the greens and red-greens stupidly let it lie quietly where it fell: but that's not what happened on Day 1, when the universal cries were: 'too little, too late', 'it's the air pollution Right Now, stupid', and 'watchergonnadoaboudit?'  As well as opportunistic secondary themes such as - 'don't just dump it on the local authorities'.

(And all this was before the 1 O'Clock News, which tells us the opposition is thinking quickly on its feet, even during the silly season.  And, of course, they have the BBC firmly in tow.  These are dangerous political times for Tories.)

But the day before that, Gove himself did some 'quick thinking on his feet' - and came out against chlorinated chicken!  Talk about swallowing the enemy's agenda.  The Remainders must have been overjoyed: their tactic for undermining a US-UK trade deal by guessing what'll be in it and demanding pre-emptive red lines has paid off on its first outing - and there's plenty more where that came from.  GM food will be next, mark my words.  And of course 'anything produced using gas that was fracked '.  (Oh, and the 'chicken' thing deflected attention from Corbyn's woes over repaying student grants).  Well Done, Michael.

We'll come back to electric cars another day: it's a technical issue as intractable as the electrification of trains and space-heating we considered at the weekend.  In the meantime, let me leave you with one other point to watch out for.   Gove and Barwell are best buddies.  You heard it here first.

ND 

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** I have looked for this story, which was in the papers or on the news recently, but can't find the link.  Sorry.
Cartoon: Stephen Collins www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/cartoon/2012/mar/16/1 (detail)