Michael Gove

Michael Gove (b. Edinburgh 1967) is a British politician, journalist and author. He has been the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath since 2005.

Media work

Gove joined The Times in 1996 as a leader writer and has been Comment Editor, News Editor, Saturday Editor and Assistant Editor. He has also written a weekly column on politics and current affairs in the newspaper. He has also written for the Times Literary Supplement and the Spectator as well as authoring a sympathetic biography of Michael Portillo MP and a critical study of the Northern Ireland Peace Process, The Price of Peace, for which he won the Charles Douglas-Home Prize.

Previously, Michael worked for the BBC's Today programme, On The Record and Scottish Television. He is a regular panelist on BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze and Newsnight Review on BBC2.

Politics

Gove joined the Conservative Party at university and was Secretary of Aberdeen South Young Conservatives. He has helped write speeches for a variety of Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet ministers, including Peter Lilley and Michael Howard. He once applied for a job at the Conservative Research Department, but was told he was "insufficiently political" and "insufficiently Conservative", hence his turning to journalism.

Gove is Chairman of Policy Exchange, a centre-right think tank launched in 2002. As Conservative candidate in the safe seat of Surrey Heath, he entered Parliament in the 2005 election. Before becoming a candidate, Gove had expressed the view that the state should not generally interfere in domestic affairs, campaigned for greater personal freedom and wrote that "Section 28 is a nonsense" [1]. He had flatshared with Conservative Ivan Massow who later defected to Labour over Section 28. However, since he became a candidate, his views, especially on gay issues, appear to have hardened, although he still holds that it should be a matter of individual choice, not state intervention [2]. Gay rights groups slammed his comments.

He also takes a pro-Israel line and has criticised anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and several United Nations peace processes. A self-confessed neo-conservative, he called for early intervention against Saddam Hussein [3]. Surprisingly, he stated in October 2004 of Tony Blair, "I can’t hold it back any more; I love Tony!"

Gove is seen as part of an influential set of young up-and-coming Tories, sometimes disparagingly referred to as the 'Notting Hill set', including David Cameron, George Osborne, Edward Vaizey, Nicholas Boles and Rachel Whetstone. They are seen as modernisers, but also close to Michael Howard. Michael Portillo has predicted that Gove will be Leader of the Conservative Party, despite the fact that he has only very recently won a seat at Westminster.

Personal life

Gove was born in Edinburgh. At four-months-old, he was adopted by a family in Aberdeen, where he was brought up. His adopted father was an fish merchant who still works part-time in the fish-processing business. His mother worked as a lab assistant at Aberdeen University and with deaf children for Aberdeen district council. He was educated in the state and independent sectors in Aberdeen and read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1985.

He is married to the arts editor of The Times, Sarah Vine and has a daughter, Beatrice, and a son born in autumn 2004. The period when he flatshared with Ivan Massow and fellow Conservative pundit and councillor, Nicholas Boles, was described by Massow as "Tory Friends".

Bibliography

• Michael Portillo: The Future of the Right (1995). ISBN 1857023358
• The Price of Peace (2000). ISBN 1903219159
• A Blue Tomorrow – New Visions for Modern Conservatives (2001) (ed. with Edward Vaizey and Nicholas Boles). ISBN 1842750275

External links

• Official website for Surrey Heath campaign
• Policy Exchange