Friday 1 July 2016

Brexit: Why Michael Gove Wants to Take Control of Brexit Britain.

Michael Gove's brutal and ruthless decision to precision stab Boris in the back just before 'Bo-Jo' was due to launch his leadership bid should not have come as a complete surprise. Gove is the brain of Brexit in the form he wants it to take: 'take control' would appear to have had a double meaning that is apparent now.

Advertised as the people 'taking control', what Brexit under Gove means is he and his patron media baron Rupert Murdoch are taking control. Boris was an amiable front man to conceal Gove's lower key ambitions. All eyes had been on Boris as the next PM. After Brexit went their way, Boris was then completely expendable and failed to 'take control'.

Boris never really completely believed in Brexit: Gove is obsessed by the idea of remodelling Britain as part of an ideological experiment in neoconservatism. Gove has used media e-mail leaks and character assassination to further his ends. Given the fact Gove believes he represents the people the means justify the end
'Gove was never particularly close to Johnson and it was reported that at a dinner with Rupert Murdoch two years ago he told the media tycoon Johnson was not fit to be prime minister. “A ‘tipsy’ Michael Gove has launched an extraordinary wine-fuelled attack on Boris Johnson, saying he ‘has no gravitas and is unfit to lead the nation’,” is how the Mail on Sunday reported it.'
Gove is also a populist, a term reserved for those who usually challenge established power but in other cases do not ( hence the often pejorative use of the word). Gove's on record as stating he was a great fan of Tony Blair and so of spin and the use of soundbites and deception in the pursuit of higher goals.

Gove does this while posing as being humble and 'of the people, for the people' there is, bizarrely, something slightly Leninist about him with the contempt for bourgeois "experts" and 'elite opinion' and belief that the average person can administer things and by liberated from establishment structures.

Aswith many neoconservatives there Gove is a right wing revolutionary of sorts and so, should Corbyn survive ( as it possible ) Gove's skill as a polemicist and ideologue would be deployed against him and the 'red menace' and 'enemy within' to the full just as Thatcher was able to pull that off with the help of Murdoch and The Sun.

Gove does think of himself as a genuine radical outsider, a libertarian who wants to take on the establishment that denies the popular will. Again, it's the credo forged by the 1980s and the class society that post-war Labour was often blamed for entrenching by denying social aspiration, a claim he can level at 'Metropolitan elites'.

It should be remembered Gove was a grammar school boy, so he is tapping into something with his obsession with 'taking back control' from a sinister leftist establishment. The populist streak dovetails with his talent for being a polemicist. Do not underestimate Gove. He could well destroy May's credibility through media spin.

After all, May's 'One Nation' credo is threadbare stuff from Cameron ( and Heath in the 1970s ) and he does lead the right wing drive towards Brexit now, among both conservative and many Labour voters too. He will tack towards UKIP positions more too in order to 'triangulate' and boost his profile as the man who reflects popular will.

Johnson could quite possibly will lend his considerable weight to another challenger such as Teresa May simply in order to have the best chance of thwarting Gove and to spite him for his betrayal, not least given Bo-Jo has even more need now not to have any political principles whatsoever and otherwise, his career is over.

As for UKIP and Farage, a major leave figure, Johnson despises them and is on record as regarding them as part of a 'peasant's revolt', something Gove could use against him given that he knows the Brexit verdict was a 'revolt of the provinces' against London elites. Gove, in this sense,is 'more in touch'.

In the Leave campaign Boris Johnson appealed to the Home Counties. Going off for a Cricket match in the midst of a crisis is a sort of mythical Francis Drake thing to do like playing bowls on the Plymouth Hoe in the face of the Armada. Johnson fancied himself as anew updated patrician Tory with the popular touch, like Churchill.

But Gove represents the far more calculating voice of a really alienated provincial England who want Brexit and for a leading figure to 'take control'. Johnson never quite knew what he was doing while Gove did because,as with Tony Blair, he wants to be and knows he is far more in tune with 'where the people are'.

Even if Gove failed to become the next Conservative  PM, he would surely retain influence once the new leader pushes Brexit forward. If they were to fail to do that Gove would cherish his position as a backseat driver, condemning any attempt to backslide on the Leave verdict he believes he had a vital role in shaping.

Labour are hardly any better than the Tories . At least the PLP. Gove set up Johnson and disposed him once he was no longer required. Corbyn,on the other hand, is being bludgeoned to political death in full frontal view of the public, though MPs were trying to be nice about him a few days ago when advocating he resign.

As the 'coup' against Corbyn gained traction, now there are rumours of death threats coming from Corbyn supporters against MPs trying to overthrow him, though it is possible this is part of a smear campaign against Momentum. After all, they are a direct threat to other MPs should Corbyn be voted for ( again in any election contest. ).

So on the pretext of 'security' the election rules could be changed with some cunning spin and 'public diplomacy' about the Gove-like need to take back control. It is not impossible some hot heads who support Corbyn are acting in rogue ways but, given what is at stake-their precious careers and supposed electability.

Gove would cherish a direct ideological clash with Corbyn as a sort of contest similar to Thatcher's with Foot in the 1983 election. The 'centre ground' of British politics has collapsed and Brexit has intensified political polarisation to a degree not seen since the 1970s, though the upheavals could be far worse than back then.

With economies already fragile and only just recovered after the 2008 crash, the longer the political volatility goes on in Britain, the more the economic impact would be felt in weaker Eurozone nations and this could fragment and polarise politics further there too. There could be greater echoes even of 1930s Europe.

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