The balance between voter needs and a green agenda needs to be re-evaluated, Gove says. Photo: Paul Grover for the Telegraph. bag.
Now in his sixth Cabinet post, Gove is regarded as a bold Conservative reformer in his 13 years in government. He took on The Blot while studying, ideological reform during his term as Attorney General, and the practice of British agriculture as Environment Minister.
But in his latest role as Housing Minister, Michael Gove has so far been accused of timidity, and Labor is now beginning to position itself as a party proposing radical solutions to the housing crisis.
On Monday, Gove, 55, will try to change that notion by introducing a long-term housing plan that will be the centerpiece of the Conservative proposal in the next election. Sitting at the head of a long conference table in his office, Gove says the plan will begin «the rebirth of our great cities in the 21st century.» It will include a “brazen… Heseltinian approach” with the creation of a new generation of state-sponsored development corporations, modeled on the London Docks Development Corporation, which was created by Michael Heseltine and turned one of the capital's most depressed areas into a financial center. A separately centralized «supergroup» of planning officials will assist individual local authorities with applications for the largest developments.
In expounding the Conservative position to voters on housing issues, Gove briskly flaunts his reputation as one of the party's most effective attack dogs, with a withering analysis of Sir Keir Starmer, who he insists failed in the general election despite the Selby and Ainsty constitutions dropping a majority of 20,137 Tories. last week.
“The British public in 1992 saw that Neil Kinnock…didn’t make a deal, they saw him suggest he was at a rally in Sheffield going to number 10 and they said no. Similarly, I don't believe the British public thinks that Keir Starmer is ready to be Prime Minister. It's not the same as it was in the 1990s.”
When Tony Blair took office in 1997, Gove was a senior journalist and had eight more years to become an MP. A quarter century later, he insists that Starmer is not Blair.
“Seeing Starmer and Blair together on stage this week — I know it’s a pretentious Shakespearean quote — it’s like Hyperion and a satyr,” he says. “It's like a superstar and someone from a seedy tribute band. It's like seeing Mick Jagger and one of the Counterfeit Stones.»
«Seeing Starmer and Blair on stage together this week is like Hyperion and a satyr»
Gove insists that Labor's position «on a range of issues is either inconsistent or formless.»
The MP, who as Minister for Education between 2010 and 2014 was responsible for sweeping reforms such as allowing all schools to convert to academy status, is taking aim at a recent speech in which Starmer laid out his «mission» for education.
«The election is about a year away. His only idea was that children should speak more beautifully,” says Gove. «I mean, it's pathetic.»
He is referring to Labor's plans to introduce public speaking — teaching conversational skills — into the national curriculum. Doesn't Gove, one of the cabinet's best communicators, think it's a good idea?
«Yeah. But it's the same with tying your own shoelaces. The thing is, I remember where we were the year before the 2010 election when we mapped out plans for academicism, free schools, curriculum reform, Ofsted reform. And nothing. Then about the economy, when I listen to Rachel Reeves, all she can say is, 'We'll have jobs in the industries of the future.'Frankly, Gove knows a thing or two about reform. Days after his election as MP for Surrey Heath in 2005, he was appointed to the front bench of Michael Howard and only five years later became Minister of Education in the David Cameron-led Coalition. During his time in several government positions, he defended what he describes as «the lost boys» «because I was very aware that I could be one of them.» Gove himself (born Graham Andrew Logan) was adopted — his adoptive father, Ernest, died in January. He grew up in Aberdeen, the son of longtime Labor voters, and won a scholarship to the city's Robert Gordon School. His father worked in the family's fishing business in Aberdeen Harbour, but later revealed that his son «hated the smell and gutting of the fish.»
At Oxford, Gove laid the foundation for a career in politics by joining the Conservative Association (he had previously been a member of the Labor Party) and helping Boris Johnson to be elected president of the debating society of the Oxford Union (Gove himself became president the following year). After Oxford, his first job was in the Telegraph column at Peterborough; he eventually became a lead writer at The Times, where he met Sarah Vine, a fellow columnist and mother of his two university-aged children. They divorced last year.
However, throughout this, Gove has always managed to come out on top. Despite falling out with Cameron over his decision to campaign for Brexit and his toxic decision to derail Boris Johnson's 2016 presidential campaign for his own ambitions, he remained a consistent figure at the Cabinet table for much of the Tory's 13 years in office—perhaps because of the intelligence that has made him indispensable to each of the five Conservative leaders since 2010 (with the exception of Liz Truss). , after he endorsed Sunak to replace Johnson).
Gove and Boris Johnson on the Vote Leave campaign bus in 2016. Photo: PA Images/Alamy Stock Photo. task. Major planning reforms aimed at boosting housing construction across the country have been repeatedly thwarted in the past by Conservative MPs from green, predominantly southern locations.
Gove says that to date, his work on disparate issues has come down to «providing the right homes in the right places.» This includes his work on the cladding crisis, when thousands of tenants found themselves unable to sell their apartments due to problems with combustible cladding, insulation and balcony decking. Gove got developers to fund the replacement of hazardous materials so that such houses could be put on the market again. He made other unpopular decisions about the right buildings in the right places — not least his refusal to allow Marks & Spencer to demolish and rebuild his flagship store on Oxford Street due to what he believes will be an impact on surrounding buildings.
In February 2022, he published a 350-page white paper on leveling up. In his speech on Monday, he will elaborate on the elements of this document, including the commitment to embark on 20 urban regeneration projects, two of which are currently underway in Wolverhampton and Sheffield.
Gove outlines the front lines the Conservatives will draw ahead of the election. Labor is a «suburban sprawl» party that wants to «swallow up the green belt,» he said. On the contrary, the Tories, according to Gove, are «a party that wants to make sure that our city has the opportunity for life and pedestrian regeneration, which in many cases those who aspire to climb the ladder of housing will want to be.»
Can the government really solve the housing crisis when most of the new construction is only in cities? Yes, you absolutely can. He cites four-, five- and six-story homes in Marylebone, London and Clifton, Bristol as «the best and most attractive kind of urban living» that provides «much more returns in terms of both the number of new homes you create and livability.» Gove acknowledges that most major cities outside of London are significantly less dense but «have significantly more area available for development than our competitors and neighbours». He wants to launch a wave of new homes in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool using the development corporations the councils claim to build. These government-sponsored bodies then used forced land purchase orders and sold chunks of it to developers to build new homes.
2,207 houses
“Basically, this is an imitation of Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine,” he says. «London Docks is one of the biggest and most successful events ever.» Gove's goal is for the areas covered by development corporations to coincide with the 12 investment zones announced by Jeremy Hunt in which businesses will receive tax breaks.
He also wants to turn Cambridge into Britain's Silicon Valley, a «center of scientific excellence» with huge new labs in the area and 250,000 homes. “Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard, MIT and others will soon be developing huge square miles of laboratory space. At Oxford and Cambridge we are cramped. We do not have the wet labs [where physical samples are tested and analyzed] needed to maintain our leadership in the life sciences.”
Separately, he says the government «will be building a planning superteam,» which he calls Atlas 2.0 — the Land Action Task Force. «I know it has something like the Marvel Comics name,» he says. “But individual local governments — with all their will — will not always have access to the necessary planners. So we're building this team — Avengers Assemble — to be able to support development on these big sites.»
But, he adds, “It's not just the cities. Inevitably there will be events elsewhere. It is critical to think strategically.” He cites the recently built 6,000-house Welborne Garden Village in Hampshire, which used architects involved in King Poundbury's settlement in Dorset. He also wants to make it easier to turn shops and farm buildings into houses, and to make it easier to build extensions.
How does all this building fit in with his green diploma? As Environment Minister during Theresa May's premiership, Gove threw himself headlong into the green agenda, leading the fight to ban plastic items that damage natural habitats, developing a post-Brexit agricultural support system, and championing the government's plan to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. In 2019, he appointed Tony Juniper, former head of Friends of the Earth, as chairman of Natural England, the official environmental watchdog.
Juniper has come under fire in recent months over Natural England's role in blocking up to 145,000 homes over the application of EU-led «nutrient neutrality» rules to protect rivers from pollution. Last week, The Telegraph reported that quango is separately starting to block development unless advisers agree to introduce green schemes such as Ulez and low-traffic areas.
“One of the things about nutrient neutrality is the principle that there should be absolutely no houses because there could be additional pollution in our rivers… I think it upsets the balance. I don't think it's right to accuse Natural England as if it were a deliberate obstructionist organization. They must operate within the law and regulation, and we need to work with them to change it.»
While Ulez's expansion could affect the county's vote,
However, Gove is less sympathetic to Natural England's efforts to limit air pollution.
“I think – how to put it – it’s unreasonable,” he says. “I am all for encouraging people to walk and cycle more. But there are some car rides that are absolutely essential, and low-traffic areas are a rude and sometimes counterproductive tool. In the Netherlands, we have seen how the inflexible application of the strict rules adopted in the EU leads to backlash.
«One of the dangers — I don't think Labor is even aware of this — is that if people think you treat the cause of environmental protection like a religious crusade in which you divide the world into good and bad, then you are depriving yourself of the support you need for thoughtful environmental protection.»
Should Natural England suspend its work in this area? “Yes,” he says. “Some of the Climate Change Committee's advice on what we should do is so far ahead of the people, especially during a cost-of-living crisis, that you risk ending up with a backlash instead of a consensus.”
When asked about the government's own goals, such as a planned 2030 ban on the sale of gasoline-powered cars, Gove's response is surprisingly ambiguous. “I haven't looked back at a specific target since I worked at Defra,” he says. “I'm sure, and this week Kemi has received investment from Tata and Jaguar Land Rover, so I think we're on track for that, but I don't know enough to say if it's a perfectly calibrated target. But based on everything I've heard, I'm sure it's achievable.”
Should Rishi Sunak lift the ban on new petrol and diesel cars?
In terms of its own policy, Gove wants to relax current rules that prevent landlords from renting out their homes unless they pay to upgrade their property's energy efficiency rating by 2028, which could include spending on installing a heat pump, thermal insulation or solar panels.
“I firmly believe that we are asking too much too quickly. We do want to move towards greater energy efficiency, but just now, with landlords facing so many challenges, I think we should slow down the pace set for people in the private rented sector, especially as many of them are currently facing a lot of capital investment to improve that efficiency.”
The level-up secretary, sitting in his ministerial office, seems a far cry from the off-duty Gove, who has been filmed at least twice at nightclub parties in recent years with hands up. “Politicians are people,” he says. «Everyone will have different ways to relax and let off steam.
«One of the things about Britain as a whole is that we are a country with a lot of eccentricities — and such people.» Gove himself is certainly one of the most eccentric. It seems that in the government, at least, the people — mostly — too.
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