Political positions of Michael Gove

Gove was a prominent figure in the campaign for Britain to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum and described his decision to take that side as "the most difficult decision of my political life".^[4][5][6]

He argued Britain would be "freer, fairer and better off" for leaving,^[5] and that "[t]he day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want."^[7] When in an interview it was claimed that there was no expert opinion to support this, Gove remarked that "the people of this country have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms saying they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong."^[8] However, interviewer Faisal Islam interrupted Gove after the word "experts",^[9] causing some sources to report that he had made a general statement that "the people... have had enough of experts".^[10] In 2021, Louise Richardson, the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, said she was "embarrassed" that Gove was an alumnus, on account of these comments.^[11]

In 1997, Gove wrote of capital punishment, which was abolished in the UK in 1965, arguing in The Times that, "Were I ever alone in the dock I would not want to be arraigned before our flawed tribunals, knowing my freedom could be forfeited as a result of political pressures. I would prefer a fair trial, under the shadow of the noose."^[12] The Independent reported in 2015 that Gove had not appeared to repeat his backing for the death penalty since he made the remarks in the late 1990s.^[13]

In December 2015, Gove was praised for scrapping the courts fee introduced by his predecessor as Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling.^[14] The fee had been heavily criticised for, among other things, causing innocent people to plead guilty out of financial concerns.^[15] Gove removed the 12-book limit on prison books introduced by Grayling, arguing that books increased literacy and numeracy, skills needed for making prisoners a "potential asset to society". The move, effective from September 2015, was welcomed by Frances Cook of the Howard League for Penal Reform.^[16]

During his tenure as Shadow Minister for Housing and Planning, Gove criticised the then-Labour government for its introduction of the Empty Properties Rating Bill, because he viewed it as a damaging tax, especially during an economic downturn. He also criticised Labour's top-down housing targets.^[17]

In September 2021 the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government was renamed the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities under Secretary of State Gove.^[18] In April 2024, Gove stated that 2030 should be the reference point by which the implementation of the levelling up policy should be judged, comparing it to a half-built cathedral by stating "well some of it looks great but the rest of it is just a mess".^[19]

In July 2010, Gove said that the Labour Party had failed in their attempt to break the link between social class and school achievement despite spending billions of pounds: quoting research, he indicated that by the age of six years, children of low ability from affluent homes were still out-performing brighter children from poorer backgrounds. At a House of Commons Education Select Committee he said that this separation of achievement grew larger throughout pupils' school careers, stating: "In effect, rich thick kids do better than poor clever children when they arrive at school [and] the situation as they go through gets worse".^[20]

Gove's views on exam systems became clear in December 2014 after the release of archive papers from 1986. GCSEs were the brainchild of Sir Keith Joseph. Margaret Thatcher, believing they lacked rigour, fiercely opposed them. However, opposition to the new exams from the teaching unions persuaded her to introduce them immediately, purely so as not to appear weak. Although Gove had sought but failed to replace them, his special advisor, Dominic Cummings, described the 1986 decision as catastrophic, leading to a collapse in the integrity of the exam system.^[21]

During the 2010 Conservative Party Conference, Gove announced that the primary and secondary-school national curricula for England would be restructured, and that study of authors such as Byron, Keats, Austen, Dickens and Hardy would be reinstated in English lessons as part of a plan to improve children's grasp of English literature and language. He said that this was needed because left-wing ideologies had undermined education. Theirs was the view, he thought, that schools "shouldn't be doing anything so old-fashioned as passing on knowledge, requiring children to work hard, or immersing them in anything like dates in history or times tables in mathematics. These ideologues may have been inspired by generous ideals but the result of their approach has been countless children condemned to a prison house of ignorance".^[22]

In April 2011, Gove criticised schools for not studying pre-twentieth century classics and blamed "England's constricted and unreformed exam system" for failing to encourage children to read. Gove also blamed an "anti-knowledge culture" for reducing achievement and said children benefited when expectations were set higher.^[23] In June 2011, he called for students to have "a rooting in the basic scientific principles".^[24]

Gove supported the 2013 Act legalising same-sex marriage in England and Wales.^[25]

In 2008, Gove credited Cardinal Keith O'Brien with using his intellect to protect the vulnerable in Scotland whilst regretting the absence of a similar figure in the Kirk.^[26]

In 2012, Gove was behind plans to provide schools throughout England and Wales with a copy of the King James Bible (inscribed "presented by the Secretary of State for Education") to celebrate the 400th anniversary of its translation into English, though he said he backed the scheme because of the historical and cultural significance of that translation rather than on purely religious grounds.^[27][28]

In April 2015, he described his faith in an article for The Spectator. In widely reported remarks, he complained that "to call yourself a Christian in contemporary Britain is to invite pity, condescension or cool dismissal."^[29][30]

In 2016, he credited his Christian faith for his focus as Justice Secretary on redemption and rehabilitation.^[31]

The Financial Times describes Gove as having "strong neoconservative convictions".^[2]

In 2003, he stated that he did not believe the United States' "current position in the world [was] analogous to that of an Imperial power, as we have come to understand imperial powers".^[32]

William Dalrymple, reviewing Gove's book Celsius 7/7 on the roots of Islamic terrorism in The Times, dismissed Gove's knowledge of the Middle East as being derivative and based on the views of Bernard Lewis.^[33]

In February 2003, Gove expressed admiration for Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair because of the way he was handling the crisis in Iraq: "As a right-wing polemicist, all I can say looking at Mr Blair now is, what's not to like?" Blair, he thought, was "behaving like a true Thatcherite".^[34] In December 2008, Gove wrote that declarations of either victory or defeat in Iraq in 2003 were premature, and that the "liberation" of Iraq was a foreign policy success.

The liberation of Iraq has actually been that rarest of things—a proper British foreign policy success. Next year, while the world goes into recession, Iraq is likely to enjoy 10% GDP growth. Alone in the Arab Middle East, it is now a fully functioning democracy with a free press, properly contested elections and an independent judiciary... Sunni and Shia contend for power in parliament, not in street battles. The ingenuity, idealism and intelligence of the Iraqi people can now find an outlet in a free society rather than being deployed, as they were for decades, simply to ensure survival in a fascist republic that stank of fear.^[35]

Tariq Ali once recalled how, at the time of the Iraq War, he "debat[ed] the ghastly Gove on television [... and found him] worse than most Bush apologists in the United States."^[36]

Gove had to be calmed by parliamentary colleagues in August 2013 after shouting, "A disgrace, you're a disgrace!" at various Conservative and Liberal Democrat rebels who contributed to defeating the coalition government's motion to attack Syria in retaliation for the 2013 Ghouta attacks.^[37] He later stated he was reacting to the manner in which Labour MPs celebrated the outcome of the vote.^[38]

In 2015, Gove cancelled a £5.9 million contract to provide services for prisons in Saudi Arabia, according to The Guardian, because it was thought "the British government should not be assisting a regime that uses beheadings, stoning, crucifixions and lashings as forms of punishment." Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond accused Gove of being naive.^[39]

Gove has described himself as "a proud Zionist",^[40] and supports the United Jewish Israel Appeal's fundraising activities.^[41] In 2019, he reiterated "One thing I have always been since I was a boy is a Zionist" and spoke of his desire to "celebrate everything that Israel and the Jewish people have brought to the life of this world and hold it dear to our hearts" and that "For as long as I have breath in my body and a platform on which to argue I shall be on your side, by your side and delighted and honoured to argue, powerfully I hope, on behalf of people who have contributed so powerfully to the life of this nation".^[42]

Gove is, like the great majority of UK Conservative Party MPs, a member of Conservative Friends of Israel.^[43] He has said that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel is antisemitic. Gove said that jihadist terrorists "hate Israel, and they wish to wipe out the Jewish people's home, not because of what Israel does but because of what Israel is – free, democratic, liberal and western."^[44]

In January 2025, Gove asked, "Why not nominate the men and women of the Israel Defence Forces for the Nobel Peace Prize?", suggesting that Israel's prosecution of the war on Gaza was the only path to peace.^[45]

Gove preferred Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump as President of the United States during the 2016 presidential election,^[46] and endorsed Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election.^[47]

Gove believes that Scotland should remain part of the United Kingdom, arguing that Scotland's strengths complement those of other parts of the UK.^[48] He has expressed interest in the idea of letting Scottish people living in the other countries of the UK vote in a second Scottish independence referendum.^[49]

In an article about the First World War centenary in January 2014,^[50] Gove criticised academic and television interpretations of World War I as "left-wing versions of the past designed to belittle Britain and its leaders."^[51][52]

Some of Gove's key points were rebuffed by the academics that Gove had used to support his thesis. Gove had criticised Cambridge professor Sir Richard Evans saying his views were more like that of an undergraduate cynic in a Footlights review. Instead he urged people to listen to Margaret MacMillan of Oxford University. MacMillan responded, saying: "I agree with some of what Mr Gove says, but he is mistaking myths for rival interpretations of history. I did not say, as Mr Gove suggests, that British soldiers in the First World War were consciously fighting for a western liberal order. They were just defending their homeland and fighting what they saw as German militarism."^[53] Evans said Gove's attack was "ignorant" and asked how anyone could possibly say Britons were fighting for freedom given their country's main ally was Tsarist Russia.^[54] Jeremy Paxman said Gove had "wilfully misquoted" Evans on the subject of the First World War.^[55]

During the 2008 Conservative Party Conference, Gove argued that Edmund Burke was the greatest conservative ever. When asked about those who believe "Marx was right all along", he responded that they were guilty of ignoring the systematic abuses and poverty of centrally planned economies, and criticised the historian Eric Hobsbawm, saying that "only when Hobsbawm weeps hot tears for a life spent serving an ideology of wickedness will he ever be worth listening to."^[56]

Giving evidence before the Leveson Inquiry in May 2012, Gove said he was "unashamedly on the side of those who say that we should think very carefully before legislation and regulation because the cry 'something must be done' often leads to people doing something which isn't always wise."^[57]

In remarks prepared for the 2020 Ditchley Lecture, Gove portrayed what he saw as the malaise of modern society as leading to populism, because the non-intellectual classes "chose to opt for polarised identity politics rather than stay with broad-based national political movements" instead of choosing to follow the politics of diversity, inclusion and identity politics they were force-fed by the elites. He praised Franklin D. Roosevelt as a model for his renewal of capitalism and he imagined the construction of inclusive societies with the deconstruction of Whitehall. Gove stressed "basic writing, meeting chairing and time management skills" for all policy civil servants. He ended with a paean to his purpose in public service: "to tackle inequality".^[58][59]