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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Michael Gove: the next Tory Leader?
There’s a piece by Benedict Brogan in this morning’s Telegraph about Michael Gove, where he writes about Michael Gove as a possible contender to replace David Cameron.
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Don't see this one happening. Smart man, Gove, and principled, which is a good thing. Sadly has a face for radio, though, which is increasingly important these days
edit: still no answer from tim on why union donations in kind shouldn't be counted like other donations
It would be easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking that "therefore" he should be the next leader, or the next Prime Minister, or whatever; but I fear that he might be promoted into the wrong position. It might be the Peter Principle in action. Let him stay doing a good job in Education, and let someone who is a bit more, er, normal, be the next leader.
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/03/if-you-pay-them-money-partisans-will-tell-you-the-truth/
I can point to plenty of data that shows the London Challenge was a spectacular success. Cost-effectiveness is a highly subjective, easily manipulated concept - and a great excuse to use when you are looking to justify getting rid of stuff you don't like, especially when it works and is ideologically inconvenient.
@Sun_Politics: Labour MPs call for EU referendum http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4954071/Ed-Milibands-MPs-warn-him-Brits-must-get-EU-referendum.html
Hopefully therefore the blues will be stupid enough to elect him leader.
When Gove declared for BOO I reckoned he became the next Conservative leader - unless Boris re-enters Parliament.
In “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe”, Tilda Swinton played the Witch. When filming her first scenes with Skandar Keynes (who played Edmund) she stayed in character and was deliberately cold and abrupt with him so that he felt uncomfortable and realistically awkward in the way that Edmund would have been.
Should newspaper editorials count as "donations in kind" ?
Not sure I can see this happening; Gove's a bit too Marmite.
It doesn't work with a woman, the Doctor is an essentially male character.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22754866
"It would be a "political disaster" if the UK pulled out of the human rights convention, the president of the European Court of Human Rights says.
Judge Dean Spielmann said it would also mean leaving the 47-member Council of Europe and possibly the EU."
There will be no vacancy for tory leader before the election. If the tories lose that election I suspect that they could do worse for a Loto. He performs well in the House and can be quite cutting in an understated way. Personally, I would like to see him master another portfolio before he got to that point but politics just doesn't seem to work that way anymore. I certainly don't see him moving from Education before the election.
10/1 doesn't seem far out.
Gove also shares her provincial petit bourgouise background, and unwillingness to suffer fools gladly.
Gove has a clear ideology and is unafraid to stick up for it against opinion, such as at Leveson and at the recent headteachers conference. He would be a good leader of the opposition.
Could he be PM with voter appeal? Possibly not, but he will be facing another political nerd wich balances things a bit.
Remember that what appeals to me or even the country is not relavent. The choice will be made by the parliamentary party and conservative membership.
I have a few quid on.
On Friday I went for a picnic with a friend who is a teacher at a private school, despite being rather to the left politically. She expressed an utter hatred and contempt for Gove and every single one of his policies. According to her, he does not understand education and is trying to bend his own bad ideas onto a good education system. However when I tried to pin her down on why, she could not really elucidate *why* they were bad.
She rather blotted her copybook when she called him ill-educated and thick; two characteristics I would not pin on Gove. (Although there is a difference between intellectual and practical intelligence).
Compare with some other friends of mine, one of whom went through school during the Labour years, who hate the way the education system was set up in the 2000s. Their views are equally woolly and hard to pin down.
From these few anecdotes, I see Gove as a divisive character, and that means he will not be PM.
The point about immigrants - is a different one and it is this - that those who are not entitled to free health care i.e. those who are not British residents or in possession of the EU health card should pay for their treatment, as is currently the law. But that point wasn't really touched on.
Where he does 'get it' is in promoting the interests of ordinary C1/C2 (and below) voters, as they used to be called; free schools being the prime example. IMO, no minister has done more to improve the opportunities for social mobility in the last 15 years - or received less credit due. Still, a leader has to be a salesman and I don't see Gove as that. The mind behind the voice? That's another matter.
Send him back to the Times where he can do less damage.
Otherwise Len McLusky and Hugh Grant would be the top politicians in the country.
Without reverting to kneejerk anti-EU rhetoric, let's consider what Spielman has actually said:
"Courts are there to decide and to control action taken by the Executive. This is the basic principle of any democracy."
My interpretation of those words is that in Spielman's eyes, the judiciary acts as a counter-balance to the Executive (note that term rather than Legislature). Now, I've no problem with this - bad legislation which can pass through a whipped Parliament can and has to be challenged so shouldn't the role of the Judiciary be as a last line of defence against unjust or unreasonable law?
Conservative MP Dominic Raab takes a different line arguing that the ECHR lacks democratic accountability and that any body making new law should be accountable.
Again, a very reasonable argument - Parliament makes the law and is accountable while the Judiciary acts as a layer of scrutiny and is not.
Spielman's counter is that the nations in the Council of Europe have effectively pooled sovereignty and created a supra-national mechanism and here's where we get to the nub of the gist - Raab says only Parliament can create new law because it is accountable while Spielman asserts that by joining the Council, we have explicitly agreed to pool sovereignty and therefore empowered the ECHR to create new law.
I can see why those opposed to the EU would be hugely uncomfortable with this - giving away the power to make law for the British people is a big step though we are part of other international legal frameworks which presumably also required the assent of Parliament to be enacted. I suspect, as Spielman points out, that there are countries which do not and have not ratified ECHR or Council decisions when they simply choose not to and the extent of any sanction seems at best unclear.
The problem with Islamists is that they think that 51% of the vote gives them the right to impose their views on others, it doesn't. That's not real democracy.
One of the main things a successful state needs to do, is to protect the rights of the minority. The Kemelist state let people pray as much as they wanted, didn't force people to have a beer nor to wear a bikini. The Islamist want to enforce their views on others.
Frankly, I'm all for a bunch of Cols to send in the troops right now.
Wouldn't an Ed Miliband win in 2015, coupled with Brown denying the Tories an outright victory in 2010, put paid to that theory? John Major? Margaret Thatcher?!
My friends aren't political in the slightest but when I mentioned Farage to one of them the other day, he said he was great but you can't have a joker running the country... Said the same for Boris.... And these are Essex boys who like football and lager!
Personally, I think Gove comes across very well, I'd consider voting Tory if he was leader. If being too clever and articulate is a political curse, then what kind of state are we in?
Evidence for the comparative assessment of Osborne's and Gove's intelligence?
Or did you reach this conclusion by means of an anecdote-based approach?
I won't go on....I wouldn't like to give UKIP and the BOO-ers any ideas.
http://labourlist.org/2013/06/poll-shows-little-enthusiasm-for-labour-backing-tory-spending-plans-except-from-labour-supporters/
On Topic: I think he'd be a very good leader, I think others don't - I've got him backed and then laid off again on Betfair at the moment anyway. That being said I'll top up another fiver, anything over 8-1 is value I think. £5 on T May at 7.68 on Betfair also..
My big green is on Hammond though !
Retail Sales are a real b*gger, aren't they?
Not two weeks ago you were jumping up and down demanding my immediate response to news from the ONS that they fell in April.
And we have all the distortions like the timing of Easter and in which month the snow fell to contend with.
Well, what do you know, but up pops the British Retail Consortion with the first estimate of sales in May and the story changes completely.
UK retail sales rebounded in May driven by demand for furniture and flooring, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) revealed.
Like-for-like sales at stores open at least 12 months grew by 1.8% from a year earlier after dropping 2.2% in April.
The total value of retail sales climbed by an annual 3.4% in May after falling by 0.6% the previous month.
Furniture, flooring, childwear and online sales were the major drivers of last month’s results, BRC said.
"While sales didn't soar through the roof, this is still a very creditable performance from UK retailers,” said David McCorquodale, Head of Retail at KPMG.
"Remember, these are ‘back to basics’ sales that haven't been artificially boosted by one-off factors like Easter or last year's Jubilee. Promoting the right product at the right price made the difference in May."
I think we need to wait for the Visa Expenditure Index and eventually the ONS before dancing in the streets, but the interim news does look very encouraging.
- Stage a coup against the current elected government.
- Make a new constitution with more checks and balances and a higher bar to changing it.
- Have new elections.
...at which point they'd be a democracy again...
I would also agree that Gove is not that salesman yet but that does not mean he cannot learn. The article he did for the Telegraph recently was an effective demolition of Ed Miliband (admittedly a bit of an open target) and a much more assertive voice than we are used to. He would need to do a lot more of that and, unfortunately, a little less of the old world charm which I personally enjoy.
I think he has the capacity for growth. Let's face it Maggie started off painfully awkward and difficult. Her advantages, like Gove, were that she knew what she wanted to say, why it was important and she had weak opponents. Gove would have all of those advantages but he would realistically only become leader in opposition.
I'm sure you'd be the first to concede that one month's figures shouldn't be viewed in isolation and I'm also sure much of your view on these issues is to provoke a reaction from the Bens and Tims of this world.
I don't share your expansive optimism if for no other reason that, as with most other people, I've yet to feel much in the way of tangible benefit. I'm also concerned that your excessive optimism will lead to rises in interest rates sooner than has been widely predicted and that is going to have a real impact on a number of people for whom the recession didn't have that strong an impact.
Politically, one could also argue that rising rates help savers, many pensioners live off their savings and are or were the bedrock of Conservative support so raising rates before 2015 could be construed as some form of encouragement to return the elderly to the fold. I presume the prescription post 2015 will be higher interest rates offset by tax cuts and "the kind of spending cuts George really wanted to do in 2010 but couldn't because of those peaky Lib Dems".
I recently predicted that by the autumn we would be seeing an uptick in house building. I really need to curb this inherent pessimism. It would seem that we are on the move already. Taken with the retail figures it looks like May was a very, very good month indeed, probably ensuring a good out turn for Q2. I think it increasingly likely Q2 will exceed the 0.3 of Q1 resulting in major changes in our forecasts for the year and, hopefully, downward revisions of the deficit.
BRC figures as stated in my post to Ben. Headline figure is that sales are up in May on a Year on Year basis by 3.4%.
And now for the CBI:
The Confederation of British Industry’s monthly survey of retail and other ‘distributive’ trades pointed to the worst performance since the start of last year in May. The net balance of retailers reporting increased sales volumes during the month were outnumbered by those
reporting a decline by 11%, the strongest negative reading since January of last year. The survey has signaled a marked weakening of the trend in the retail environment since peaking last November (with a net balance of some +33%).
Oh well, it does mean everyone can be happy for a couple of weeks until the ONS finally pronounce on their figures.
To my knowledge, no country which has joined the EU has ceased to be governed by a Parliamentary democracy during its membership. The likes of Spain, Portugal and Greece didn't join until after their dictatorships had ended and democracy had been re-established and the same was true of the post-Communist countries.
In 1961 the West Midlands had higher average incomes than anywhere else in the UK, including London and the South East.
Thanks Tim. Your second answer is opinion (which may or may not be valid). Is there a link to what the announcement in the HoC said (or wherever it was made)? I'm genuinely interested.
In addition, he's exceptionally bright, very witty, has a clear vision, and is delightfully pugilistic in his political style.
But.... not only is he not really a natural for attracting voters in the centre and not really suited to the TV style, more importantly for betting purposes he has created a fair amount of resentment within the Conservative Party - specifically, Conservative councillors who are part of the educational establishment which he has been laying into so vigorously. That's an important group of people in any leadership contest.
If a vacancy came up at a suitable time in the next two or three years, and if he wanted the job (he says he doesn't, and I tend to believe him on that), he might be a serious contender; if he got into the final round, everything would depend on who his opponent was. Of the various names which have been bandied about, my guess is that when it came to the members' vote he'd beat Jeremy Hunt, Adam Afriyie or George Osborne, but not Boris, and probably not Philip Hammond or Theresa May (although she's still unpopular because of the 'Nasty Party' remark). Of course, on past form the next leader could well be someone who is currently off the radar.
Overall, I'd say 10/1 is fair value, but I wouldn't want to take anything less.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4526154.stm
Other than bringing back grammar schools he's doing a great job.
I don't think that would go down very well with UKIP voters.
He would be a quite terrible choice for the Conservatives for their next leader and most Conservatives know it in their heart of hearts. Speculating that he might be the next leader is a bit like going to the pub and casually flirting with the barmaid - a way of expressing forbidden impulses in a way that's never going to get you into trouble.
Mr Balls did not perform too badly. But his attempted triple contortion was visibly painful.
...
The new strategy may be more realistic. But it will be a hard sell – especially with Mr Balls as its prime salesman – without smelling of capitulation.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cf0dc3ae-cc69-11e2-bb22-00144feab7de.html#axzz2VEiKTGtV
The particular line I had in mind was: I suspect the public broadly don't mind about what is called austerity but they do want to see their personal financial situation improve which means rising income outstripping rises in things like fares and fuel.
The fall in standards of living is one area that the Coalition government, even on a most optimistic estimate of performance, cannot solve by 2015. But what they can do is bring the deficit down by, say, 80% by the end of this parliamentary term. Indeed we will start to see movements in forecast deficit reduction towards this kind of level when the OBR publishes its July EFO.
At the same time underlying inflationary pressures are likely to remain very low at least in the short term, meaning that hiking up the base rate is not seen as likely before 2016 by most economic forecasters. Exiting QE, including new QE to solve the bank recapitalisation and credit supply problems will be the priority.
Add to this the probability that the government will be able to sell substantial proportions of its shares in the intervened banking groups within the next two years and there is clear sight of a there being very much stronger fiscal position in 2015 than today.
So we are likely to be going into an election with the deficit job nearly done, government debt substantially reduced (bank share sales) and the economy growing at a reasonable and sustained if not exciting rate.
Where next? You have suggested that wage rises will be needed to reverse some of the falls in standards of living and to increase the feelgood factor. I am fairly certain that Osborne, at least, will not be agreeing with you.
This is why Osborne is undertaking a 2015-16 spending review now, and closing out Ed Balls's election options, causing great anger by Ed as evidenced in his speech yesterday.
Osborne's election proposal will be continued constraint of government spending and wage inflation, offset by stable asset prices (house prices rising with or just below inflation), continued low borrowing costs and the prospect of funded tax cuts.
Tax cuts will be offered as a reward for austerity, with public and private sector wages increased only in so far as they are linked to productivity gains. The cuts will be balanced with investments in additional infrastructure development, but increasingly the government will be wanting to draw in private sector finance to help with the heavy lifting here.
Labour will oppose vigorously but their main arguments that core public services will be endangered will have been answered by the ring-fencing policies to protect the NHS and Education. There will also be key private sector investment commitments which the government can use as demonstrators for future rebalancing.
The tax cuts outlined, based on forward spending plans and 80% achieved fiscal consolidation, will be attacked as electoral bribes but the reality is that they will seen by economists as the natural next step in the recovery process. It will be time to stimulate demand to generate further growth. Balls might want to call them "bribes" but the markets, IMF and OECD and other economic commentators will back the government up on the logic.
All this has left Ed Balls like a cornered rat. Hence his rage yesterday: the last tirade against austerity economics pitched at the only time he can call into evidence OBR's "flatlining" forecasts.
But it also challenges Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems. Will the answer be Osborne lite? Or will they go along with the economic logic but with their cuts being more distributive than those offered by the Tories?
Over to you. Government stimulated or licensed wage inflation will not be the answer to the standards of living conundrum.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/03/labour-iron-man-ed-balls
"Swallowing the iron envelope hurts, but it has become a necessity since Labour's failure to win crucial arguments: Labour "overspending" has been successfully blamed for the size of the national debt, with the cost of the crash and bank bailouts blurred into the overspending story. Never mind that David Cameron pledged to match Labour spending, or that Gordon Brown didn't crash the global economy – or that the national debt at the time of the crash was less than Labour inherited from John Major in 1997.
The hard truth is that the Tories and their mighty press have won the battle over the writing of that history, as victors do. Keynes's "paradox of thrift" proved too paradoxical. Now Labour can only try to win the battle for the future – and that requires cauterising the past. Besides, inheriting Osborne's no-growth legacy means there will be no great leeway for a splurge in current spending."
I mean, this is the party that elected IDS as leader...
In essence they will be campaigning for the continuation of the austerity the have opposed for the last five years...
Ed Milliband can also appear quite geeky and odd and not obviously voter-friendly.
I've no idea whether Gove would be a good leader or is even popular within the party. But I wouldn't assume that geekiness, oddness or unappealing personalities are necessarily the killers some here assume.
Personally I'd prefer an honest, competent geek to a superficially charming but dishonest charlatan (Blair) or a charming but rather empty-headed politician like Cameron.
I personally don't think Miliband is that geeky, but apparently that is the public perception.
I don't think Gove is that geeky either come to that.
I think that this theory is favoured by political nerds, who assume that because people less clever/interested in political details than them read tabloids and watch reality tv, they will only vote for 'good looking' politicians,
It seems to me we're re-running the 1970's where hung parliaments or very tight majorities are common. There's absolutely no sign of Labour getting a landslide anytime soon (same can be said for the Tories as well of course) so I would expect a string of very tight elections in the next decade or so, with both parties being relatively competitive on relatively small vote shares...
Unfortunately your'e being offered a dishonest incompetent geek: one who can't admit his role in the UK's economic mess and who couldn't work out we needed to build power stations.
James Chapman (Mail) @jameschappers 7m
Boris Johnson, announcing book on Winston Churchill, declares: 'The point of the ‘‘Churchill Factor’’ is one man can make all the difference.' Subtle!
Whoever is in charge is going to suffer mightily........
http://youtu.be/RgXUNYtdgZc
I did list two other major drawbacks to Michael Gove as a possible Conservative leader. Those are just as important.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4954071/Ed-Milibands-MPs-warn-him-Brits-must-get-EU-referendum.html
...one of the former ministers died.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10096849/Lord-Gilbert.html
This should put paid to any remaining doubts anybody had about whether Ed Miliband is ruthless enough to lead the OWG.
The Nixon/Kennedy example could just as easily be a comparison of the type of person who listens to the radio against someone who watches tv.
How do you explain Brown not getting hammered by Cameron? The Clegg factor maybe?
How about Miliband being odds on for next PM despite supposed geekiness?
I don't think the public are as shallow when it comes to politics as people think..