Michael Gove is the government’s go-to man to put in charge of departments that are seen to be underperforming and need shaking up. Primarily because he’s moderately more competent – a low bar – and better at appearing to get things done than most other ministers. And departments didn’t come more comatose than housing and communities under the hopeless Robert Jenrick. So at the last reshuffle, the Govester was brought in and told to give the levelling-up agenda a bit of a boost while he was about it.
Since then, Gove has kept a relatively low profile, conveniently absenting himself from the limelight as other ministers were forced to defend Boris Johnson’s many missteps over his running of Downing Street and the country. But on Monday he was forced out into the open for the first time in months to deal with growing criticism from both sides of the house of the government’s handling of the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
First to be calmed down was the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, who was upset that government policy had yet again been pre-briefed to the media. It was a complete outrage, said Gove, coming on all ever so ’umble Uriah Heep. He had no idea how he had come to leak the announcement he was about to make to the BBC, ITV and Sky during the morning’s media round. It was a complete mystery. But there would be hell to pay when he caught up with the Michael Gove who had done it. And he could promise the speaker he would set up an inquiry to investigate it immediately.
With Hoyle more or less placated, Gove moved on to the substance of the statement. It had been a huge failure of government not to offer financial protections sooner to leaseholders living in buildings more than 11 metres tall. So he was now making it clear that leaseholders would no longer have to pay to make their own buildings safe by removing flammable cladding.
Instead the burden would shift to the manufacturers of substandard cladding and the developers who had used it. And if they didn’t play ball, then the government would rope in all developers and get them to pay. And if that didn’t work, he would get the money by taxing the developers. Or something.
Labour’s Lisa Nandy, shadow secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, was not entirely convinced. Gove’s reputation for unctuousness – he’s the master of sincere insincerity – and telling people what they wanted to hear preceded him and she just wanted to check one or two details. The chances of the greedy developers agreeing to cough up speedily were about nil, she reckoned. After all, why bother to pay when, by delaying, you could reduce your liability by getting some of the decent developers to share the burden of costs?
And then it would surely be only a matter of time before you were forced to threaten taxation, as no developer who had gone to the trouble of using the more expensive fire-retardant cladding would want to fork out extra to bail out others who had got the work done on the cheap. Nor would anyone want to pay for developers who had subsequently gone into liquidation. As for the tax rises, it didn’t seem as if the Treasury was entirely on board with the scheme. So was Gove saying the money would come from his department’s own budget as a last resort? Like most things Gove announced, it sounded entirely plausible until you examined the details up close.
“Trust me,” oozed the Govester. Nandy was right to be sceptical, as it had taken the government the best part of five years to make this much progress, he said, but everything was going to be just fine. Leaseholders would not even have to pay for non-cladding costs. It would just take a bit of time to iron out some of the creases in his plan. He begged her for patience, while praising her infinite wisdom and assuring her that all would be for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.
Jenrick then chipped in to recommend Gove’s measures, something that provoked shrieks of derision from the Labour benches and open-mouthed disbelief from his own. After all, Honest Bob had always appeared more than happy to let leaseholders pay when he had been the secretary of state. He said he was sorry the chancellor hadn’t been so accommodating when he had been in charge of the department. There again, he’d probably never really forced the issue, his main achievement while in post being to facilitate Richard “Dirty” Desmond – who had previously paid £12,000 to attend a Tory fundraising dinner – swerving a £45m tax bill on his development project. The man sure knows how to shape a deal.
Now, now, said Mikey. Don’t be beastly, everyone. He knew how hard Jenrick had worked to get leaseholders to pay out. And besides, it probably hadn’t occurred to Honest Bob that it was possible to get the government to do a reverse ferret on cladding. After all, it was only the entire House of Commons that was pointing out how slow the government had been to get a grip of the situation.
Gove could have spent the rest of the session highlighting his own brilliance. But he preferred that to be left implicit. Instead, he devoted his time to praising MPs from all parties for their wisdom in asking questions of such intelligence and insight. It’s been a while since a government minister has said that to Jeremy Corbyn, and the former Labour leader appeared taken slightly taken aback. Tory Nick Fletcher was so amazed to find someone prepared to listen to him, he forgot to ask a question.
Yet for all the schmoozing and charm, there were still question marks about just how effective the plan would be. Even Mikey, the master of misplaced self-confidence, appeared to have his doubts, saying he “didn’t want to overpromise”, he “would have to look at it carefully” and he “would return to the house with more details before Easter”. For now, all he had managed was to buy a bit of time. But in a crisis like this, it was all that was required. For now.
