Michael gove

To the launch of Onward, the new liberal Conservative think tank. A who's who of the Tory party, including Liz Truss, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly, gathered in Parliament's Churchill room to raise a glass to the new venture – headed by Theresa May's former policy wonk Will Tanner. Launching the event were the new dream team: Ruth Davidson and Michael Gove. Neither were shy in coming forward. The Scottish Conservatives leader began her speech by joking that the reason she had been invited was to prove the Tory party is diverse: 'In future when think tanks ask please, can we get a pregnant lesbian, the answer for all those of us who are modernisers in the Conservative Party should be ‘which of the many pregnant lesbians?

After the EU referendum, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were such a dream team that the pair looked destined to take the top two jobs in government. However, some political back-stabbing on Gove's part soon put an end to that friendship and, as history shows, paved the way for Theresa May to become Prime Minister. This week, the Windrush row has reminded the Conservatives the hard way of the problems with her appointment. As Fraser details in his Spectator cover piece, there's growing concern among Conservative Brexiteers that the problem with having a Remainer in No. 10 is that they ‘misread’ the referendum result and see it as a 'battle of ‘open’ vs ‘closed’ — seeking to control immigration is not the same thing as being anti-immigrant.

Here we go. Although Theresa May and her government are meant to be on a Brussels charm offensive ahead of next month's crunch EU council meeting, Michael Gove couldn't resist a dig at the other side today. The Defra minister – who has recast himself as an eco-warrior in recent months – took issue with a meeting between Donald Tusk and Michel Barnier on Brexit. The problem? The pair used plastic bottles – a strict no-no in May's green Cabinet. https://twitter.com/michaelgove/status/968453874758582272 It seems the reasons to diverge grow every day...

For people who love the natural world, each new season brings new excitements. We are a nation of nature lovers. We feed the birds in our gardens and we revere David Attenborough. Which makes it surprising that – until now – governments have not cottoned on to how much of a vote-winner concerted action to restore and protect nature can be. Year in year out the abundance of life around us diminishes. Most adults can remember car windscreens splattered with dead insects after even the shortest of summer journeys. No longer. Insect populations are crashing almost everywhere, and with them everything else.

Whether it's authentic or not, the Conservative party is going green. Following Michael Gove's reinvention as resident eco-warrior, the party has been pushing green policies – from extending plastic bag charges to saving trees in Sheffield – in a bid to prove they care. Today Gove's Cabinet colleagues were brought into the fold – each being gifted a re-usable coffee cup this morning at Cabinet. However, could it be another Cabinet member who is really behind the green revolution? Step forward Andrea Leadsom. It's been remarked to Mr S that Gove's predecessor in Defra 'never misses the chance' to mention that many of good news green initiatives coming from that department were started when she was Defra Secretary.

What is Michael Gove up to? The Environment Secretary seems to be on a tree-hugging rampage at the moment, announcing a new green measure every week. Not content with unveiling the Tories’ 25 year environment plan last week, Gove has given an interview to today’s Sunday Times in which he attacks the water companies for using tax havens. The water companies are interesting enough, given Jeremy Corbyn has called for them to be renationalised. But what’s really revealing about what Gove’s overall mission is comes later in the interview, when he says: ‘Brexit creates opportunities, particularly in my area. Brexit could be the catalyst for some of the biggest, boldest environmental steps forward as we transform our fisheries and agriculture policy.

The farming community was hoping, until a few days ago, that Michael Gove might be moved to pastures new in the reshuffle that hardly happened on Monday. One Yorkshire neighbour of mine with a big muckspreader used to refer to the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs as ‘the Grim Reaper’.

After the DUP took issue with government's handling of the Irish border question on Monday, Theresa May had to return home from her lunch with Jean-Claude Juncker empty-handed. What's more, there's no indication that a solution is in sight anytime soon. The DUP worry that the wording in the draft text – promising regulatory alignment in relation to the Good Friday agreement – could see Northern Ireland treated differently than the rest of the UK – and result in an Irish sea border. Meanwhile, some Brexiteers worry that agreeing regulatory alignment between the UK and Ireland could mean an end to the clean Brexit they envisaged. So, one could be forgiven for thinking Tuesday's Cabinet meeting must have been a tense affair.

It is Remembrance Sunday, and the party leaders put their politics aside this morning as they gathered around the Cenotaph to lay wreaths and honour those who lost their lives in times of war. However, in the TV studios, the political debate still carries on with as much vigour as before: Sadiq Khan - Boris Johnson has 'got to go' The Mayor of London joined Andrew Marr today and within minutes Khan had called for Boris Johnson to be dismissed from his post as Foreign Secretary. Marr raised the subject of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British national who is currently serving a five year jail sentence in an Iranian prison.

Where better to be than in Liverpool on a crisp autumn evening, haranguing an open-air meeting of students? I hadn’t done a soapbox speech since my Trotskyist days 45 years ago, and had forgotten how exhilarating it is — the questions sharper, the audience more alert, the tempo brisker, and the missionary feeling of spreading the word. Also, the students didn’t cough all the time, which they tend to do in stuffy lecture rooms. But I had never meant to do this. Months before, Tom Willett, of Liverpool University’s politics society, had asked me to come and speak about my favourite subject, the fact that there is no ‘War on Drugs’.

There's a good reason ministerial conference speeches are often so achingly dull. Because such occasions are inevitably party political – featuring punchy attacks on Labour and so on – civil service policy experts and departmental speechwriters aren’t allowed anywhere near them, for fear of breaking various Whitehall codes. So the speeches are stitched together by the minister, his or her special advisers, and nervous party apparatchiks who are mainly focused not on policy announcements or the department’s agenda, but on making sure the Prime Minister’s team is kept happy. But though there was a faint whiff of that about David Lidington's speech earlier today, the justice secretary made a few points that are worth picking up on.