Portrait of Gove at odds with his brave reforms

From: William Snowden, Dobrudden Park, Baildon Moor, Baildon.

JAYNE Dowle reveals that she and Michael Gove were contemporaries at college and at The Times (The Yorkshire Post, July 17).

The character portrait she paints is of a man whose superficial charm was devised to serve his vaunting ambition, and delusions of grandeur.

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There was more than a hint of schadenfreude, however, about Ms Dowle’s self-satisfied rhetoric, and delight at Mr Gove’s demise as Secretary of State for Education.

I do not know Michael Gove. I can judge him only by what he said, did and sought to do. My conclusion is that he was very brave to challenge all those doctrinaire, left-wing educationalists who predominate over the Department for Education, the education authorities and unions like the National Union of Teachers. (NUT is a most telling acronym).

Mr Gove’s attempts at reform were compromised, of course, by serving in a coalition government: the Liberal Democrats are even more doctrinal than the Labour Party.

He was ultimately betrayed by a PC Prime Minister, who seems to be more concerned with public relations and presentation than with policy.