Michael Gove, the leading Brexiter who’s now in charge of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, is a natural iconoclast, sometimes a valuable characteristic in government. His education revolution left a damaging legacy of unaccountability and underfunding. But in his year as justice secretary, he won fans across the prisons sector for his plans for radical reform. They were subsequently disappointed to find there was little to show for them after he left. Now he is ploughing up old Defra policies and on Thursday he made his first significant intervention. Writing on the Guardian website, he announced support for the EU’s plan for a total ban on the neonicotinoid group of pesticides. Evidence has been steadily growing of the debilitating harm these chemicals, the most widely used pesticides in the world, cause to pollinators, particularly bees. A paper published in Science last month reported that three quarters of honey from around the world contained some neonicotinoids; they appear to linger in the soil, can leach into waterways, and – through contaminated pollen – spread further than intended. Supporting the EU ban will antagonise the farming lobby and Mr Gove’s Brexiter fanbase. But it offers a future that gives bees a chance.
