Harman….double standards highlighted by Michael Gove
Now that the good citizens of Tottenham have got into the swing of voicing their concern about the killing of gun-toting drug-dealer Mark Duggan, they’re travelling about quite a bit. Having first ventured down to Croydon the night before last, yesterday they hired charabancs for the day trip to Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester. They’re obviously very concerned indeed – as are we all.
Equally concerned is Education Minister Michael Gove, a man on the fringes of Camerlot singled out by The Slog earlier this week as one of the few decent and worthwhile members of the Cabinet. Last night he found himself face to face with Harriet Harman on BBC2’s Newsnight, and like any good old-fashioned headmaster, he gave Harman 300 lines on what a creepy, one-agenda sack of hypocritical opportunism she really is.
Some seven years ago, Rupert Everett referred to Harriet Harman as “just another f**king New Labour idiot”. He said this in the context of her deranged views about prostitution, a subject I know a reasonable amount about, as I did a major research project about it many years ago in Brixton. Ms Harman, who still lives just round the corner from where I was, came to a set of conclusions about how to deal with prostitution in the area that represents the most alarming piece of gender-bigotry I’ve ever read. More to the point, it showed that she had walked about in her constituency with eyes and ears closed for over twenty years.
Those who are unwell above the shoulders tend to do this after a certain age. Harman’s world view is stuck immovably in 1970, so she obviously started being a polemical robot at a young age. My heart sank when, after an initial disaster as a Minister under Blair in 1998, she was given a second chance as Minister for Families some years later. But the sadness turned to anger after I discovered the Secret Family Courts system in 2006, and began blogging about it at the Slog’s predecessor. For Harriet Harman clearly despises the whole idea of families, and in turn has some decidedly odd views about the sexualisation of children. Thus, during her time as a Minister, she made endless promises to reform the Secret Courts….but always found an excuse not to. The reason for this is that Harman approves of the idea of a secret State SS snatching kids from any family displaying what they (and they alone) deem to be dysfunctional behaviour.
The Mad Hattie’s ideas lie at the root of what we’ve been watching over the last few days: looser and looser families, erosion of the head of household’s role in parenting, dumbed, anti-Grammar School education….and the continuing enouragement of multi-cultural bollocks, despite the overwhelming body of evidence to show just how destructive the concept is. But on Newsnight last night, as so often, Harman’s media training kicked in yet again: ie, say it’s not a Party-divide issue, and then slip in a couple of words suggesting that the Government Party caused the problem.
Hat sees no problem with this: partly because she’s another devious Leftie believer in the good lie – but mainly because she’s got the brass neck of a bessemer converter. This was her opening gambit:
‘I don’t think people want to hear us doing anything other than now saying the absolute priority is that law and order should be restored. There will be discussions about underlying causes. I don’t agree with Cameron when he says it is simple. It is not. It is very complex. But unpicking those strands is for another day. But there is a sense that young people feel they are not being listened to. That is not to justify violence. But when you’ve got the trebling of tuition fees, they should think again about that. When you’ve got the EMA being taken away, when you’ve got jobs being cut and youth unemployment rising and they are shutting the job centre in Camberwell – well you should think again about that because this is going to cost money. All of this does not help reduce the deficit…’
Classic Brownite Labour: reasonable point followed by immediately breaking the promise to be reasonable. But Gove wasn’t having it:
‘Harriet, do you think there are people breaking into Currys to steal plasma TV screens and breaking into Foot Locker to steal box fresh trainers who are protesting against tuition fees or EMAs?….Who has been in charge of parenting policy for the last 13 years, Harriet? Who gave us this deficit? Harriet, if there is anyone who is responsible for the environment in which these young people grew up it’s you and the Labour party. Now I don’t want to have more of your double dealing out of one side of your mouth saying that you are going to show solidarity with the government and with the legitimate forces of order and on the other side try to make partisan points. Let’s put that to one side….’
The bottom line was that, by the end of probably the most lucid cross-examination of her barminess you’ll ever see, Gove pinned her in a debating corner and literally forced her to say she condemned the violence. But as with all people who don’t mean what they say – Islamic fundamentalists, Johann Hari, Rupert Murdoch, and Rebekah Brooks – there is always a ‘but’. Harman tried once too often to but her way to the high ground last night, and Gove nailed her.
When he began in the Education job, I accused Michael Gove of perhaps lacking a full grasp of just how enormous and pernicious the privileged interest group he must slay actually is. Perhaps the last few months of dealing with teachers – and the last few days watching barbarians burning down Rome – have readied Mr Gove for his fight against the polemical dragons in his path. Either way, I now humbly apologise for misjudging his bottle: Michael Gove is a man with balls of steel – and that dimension so often missing from our Ministers in 2011, ethics.
PS If you want to read the most commonsense column in Britain about education and parenting, I suggest you tune in to Katharine Birbalsingh’s blog at the Daily Telegraph.
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