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Gove minds his manners and tries to soothe MPs’ extremism concerns | Zoe Williams

Backbenches respond to new guidelines with chorus of ‘what about me?’ but minister is untroubled

Michael Gove stood before the house with his elaborately courteous mien dialled up to the max. The secretary for levelling up is so polite now that it reads as a kind of schoolboy humility as he gallops through his words, mindful of the great honour of his colleagues’ attention.

“The United Kingdom is a success story,” he said, “a multinational, multi-ethnic, multifaith democracy, stronger because of our diversity.” This was the preface to the government’s new extremism guidelines, and there’s a world in which a celebration of diversity would be a reassuring starting point. That’s not, unfortunately, the world we’re in: the text of this guidance, as Gove describes it, doesn’t make a huge amount of sense, the subtext warps and weaves with every intervention, and the context makes a joke of the whole thing. Let’s not forget the lovely manners, though.

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