The Tory Test

Peter Hitchens writes:

We have a lot of fuss about sportswomen who are accused of not actually being female, which is embarrassing and unpleasant for them. What about Tories who are not actually conservative? What is the matter with Michael Gove? Is there a test that could discover if he is a conservative?

This week in the Independent on Sunday Mr Gove gave an interview to John Rentoul, author of a not-very-critical biography of Anthony Blair.

Here are some extracts from this interview. Remember as you read them that Mr Gove is Shadow Education Secretary, and so close to David Cameron that he shares the school run with him. Both have children at a heavily oversubscribed Church of England primary school nestling in the deep heart of Kensington, surrounded by properties costing millions (though both men, who I'm happy to say are pillars of the Church of England, also live quite a way from this wondrous place). The wives of both toil for the parish magazine of the Church to which the school is attached. I read their contributions to it with joyful delight. I might add that I have known Mr Gove for years, enjoy his company, and think he is completely wrong about almost everything. He had a lucky escape in the great expenses scandal, largely because of his position as a member of the Cameroon Praetorian Guard. There's an extended version of the interview (called a ‘director's cut’ ) on the Independent on Sunday website.

I might mention that he refers to his ‘great friend, Stephen Byers’ (a former Blair Cabinet Minister). But here are two key sections:

‘And when I ask if it is wise to paint himself as a Blairite, given the former prime minister's latter unpopularity, he says: “He's not as popular as he deserves to be, and he's emphatically not as popular within Labour as he deserves to be – amazing ingratitude on their part. But if someone were to look at some of the views that I've argued and say, ‘Tony Blair said that’, it would be fatuous of me to deny it, and dishonest, so therefore I may as well acknowledge it because it is true.

“If you take the Blair view on public services reform, and particularly on education, I think it's right, and it is a pity that that trajectory was stopped. If you take the Tony Blair view on foreign policy, in terms of support for democracy abroad, then I certainly agree with that as well, but if you take certain other Blair policies, and Europe is the most conspicuous, then you can say I fall very, very far short of the high standards he set.” ‘

To anyone who's surprised, I should say that this admiration of Mr Blair is not new. In February 2003, Mr Gove wrote in The Times: ’You could call it the Elizabeth Bennett moment. It’s what Isolde felt when she fell into Tristan’s arms. It’s the point you reach when you give up fighting your feelings, abandon the antipathy bred into your bones, and admit that you were wrong about the man. By God, it’s still hard to write this, but I’m afraid I’ve got to be honest. Tony Blair is proving an outstanding Prime Minister at the moment.‘

He continued, breathlessly: ’And many, but far from all, of my fellow rightwingers will wonder what on earth I’m doing licking Mr Blair’s boots when Labour are, at last, dipping in the polls. Shouldn’t any Conservative-inclined commentator be turning up the heat on the Prime Minister now, at last, when he’s vulnerable? Don’t the Tories have enough internal problems without those writers who’re supposed to be sympathetic to their cause bigging up Blair?

‘They’re all good points if you’re a tribalist. But I’m a journalist [he wasn't an MP then]. In so far as I’m sympathetic to Tory politicians, and their arguments, it’s because as a right-wing polemicist I find them persuasive. And as a right-wing polemicist, all I can say looking at Mr Blair now is, what’s not to like?

‘Central to any current assessment of Mr Blair has to be the manner in which he is handling the Iraq crisis. But before considering just how impressive his stance is, and how petty his detractors, it’s worth noting that Mr Blair’s entitlement to conservative respect doesn’t rest on his foreign policy alone.

‘The Prime Minister has been right, and brave, to introduce market pressures into higher education by pushing through university top-up fees in the teeth of opposition from his egalitarian Chancellor. He’s been correct in conceding, to the annoyance of his wife I’m sure, that the European Convention on Human Rights gets in the way of a sane asylum policy. In dealing with the firefighters, and their absurdly selfish strike, he’s been satisfactorily resolute.

‘There are certainly idiocies aplenty across the range of this Government’s domestic policy, indeed that’s hardly surprising given ministers like Tessa Jowell and John Prescott in the Cabinet. The problem with putting muppets into office is that there’s no one left to pull the strings when your hands are full.’

This is the true voice of the new Blue Labour Tories. I couldn't have made it up, wouldn't have dared to make it up. On the one hand, a total unswerving commitment to comprehensive schools and the unhinged expansion of the universities, presumably to the point (closer than you may think) where you'll be able to get a degree if you can't read. On the other, an undying enthusiasm for liberal intervention abroad (hence the Tories' total, shameful unforgivable failure to offer any opposition at all to the Afghan folly, or the Iraq madness before it).

Curious, isn't it, how little attention this sort of thing gets. I can remember when cross-party flirting of this sort at front bench level would have been universal front-page news, ending in resignation. Just imagine the fuss, if any Labour politician were this polite about Mr Cameron, or if any Shadow Cabinet member came out in favour of grammar schools or pulling out of Afghanistan or an end to immigration, or the death penalty or leaving the EU?

Behold the wonders of the manufactured consensus. Mr Gove's words are much more interesting - and much more indicative of the true face of the Cameron circle and of the true intentions of a Cameron government, if there ever is one - than Daniel Hannan's wholly unrepresentative remarks about the NHS. But our media still think in the ancient categories of another age, and either can't or won't grasp what is important and what is not.