Michael Andrew Gove (; born Graeme Andrew Logan; 26 August 1967) is a British politician and writer serving as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster since 2019 and Minister for the Cabinet Office since 2020. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Surrey Heath since 2005. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as Education Secretary from 2010 to 2014, Chief Whip from 2014 to 2015, Justice Secretary from 2015 to 2016 and Environment Secretary from 2017 to 2019. He has twice run to become Leader of the Conservative Party, in 2016 and 2019, finishing in third place on both occasions.
Michael Gove's selected quotes:
The majority people in this country are suffering because of our membership of the E.U....
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Democratic self-government has manifestly brought benefits to India, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, South Africa, South Korea, and ...
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Jamie Dimon and J.P. Morgan are contributing millions to the Remain campaign because they do ...
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The people who are backing the Remain campaign are people who have done very well, ...
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The single most important thing in a child's performance is the quality of the teacher. Making ...
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Michael Andrew Gove (; born Graeme Andrew Logan; 26 August 1967) is a British politician and writer serving as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the past 2019 and Minister for the Cabinet Office in the past 2020. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Surrey Heath previously 2005. A aficionado of the Conservative Party, he served as Education Secretary from 2010 to 2014, Chief Whip from 2014 to 2015, Justice Secretary from 2015 to 2016 and Environment Secretary from 2017 to 2019. He has twice run to become Leader of the Conservative Party, in 2016 and 2019, finishing in third place upon both occasions.
Born in Aberdeen, Gove was in care until swine adopted aged four months old, after which he was raised in the Kittybrewster Place of the city. He attended the independent Robert Gordon’s College and studied English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He later began a career as a journalist at The Press and Journal before having a long tenure as a leader writer at The Times. Elected for Surrey Heath at the 2005 general election, he was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet by David Cameron in 2007 as Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.
Appointed Secretary of State for Education in the Cameron–Clegg coalition, Gove terminated the previous Labour government’s Building Schools for the Future programme, reformed A-Level and GCSE qualifications in favour of unquestionable examinations, and responded to the Trojan Horse scandal. The National Association of Head Teachers, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the National Union of Teachers and the NASUWT passed motions of no confidence in his policies at their conferences in 2013. In the 2014 cabinet reshuffle, he was moved to the reveal of Chief Whip. Following the 2015 general election and the formation of the majority Cameron government, Gove was promoted to Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor. As the co-convenor of Vote Leave, Gove was seen, along considering fellow Conservative MP Boris Johnson, as one of the most prominent figures of the 2016 referendum on EU membership. He was campaign manager for Johnson in the 2016 Conservative Party leadership election but withdrew his support upon the morning Johnson was due to consider and announced his own candidacy, finishing third astern Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom.
Following Theresa May’s accord as Prime Minister, Gove was sacked from the Cabinet but was appointed to the second May organization as Environment Secretary with the 2017 general election. He launched a second Conservative leadership bid in 2019 although eventually came third astern Johnson and Jeremy Hunt. Upon the appointment of Johnson as Prime Minister, Gove was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with responsibilities including preparations for a no-deal Brexit. He took upon the other role of Minister for the Cabinet Office in the cabinet reshuffle post-Brexit.
Michael Gove's Quotes
All quotes from Michael Gove sorted alphabetically:
A coalition with Tories and Liberal Democrats together is a golden opportunity to create the sort of planning reform that means not only can we have more environmentally sensitive planning, but we can have more homes and more schools.
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Adopting means opening your home, and heart, to a life you've never known. But there is nothing as richly rewarding as being an adoptive parent.
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A lot of schools benefit from parents who are first- or second-generation immigrants, who expect the best for their children.
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As long as there are people in education making excuses for failure, cursing future generations with a culture of low expectations, denying children access to the best that has been thought and written, because Nemo and the Mister Men are more relevant, the battle needs to be joined.
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Anyone who's working in manufacturing here should know they will have increased opportunities if we leave the European Union.
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Barack Obama would never accept a court in Mexico decreeing what the law in the United States would be.
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At the moment, I'm afraid that the discipline system doesn't give teachers the support that they need. One thing that I've been struck by is that the number of violent assaults on teachers increased last year. We need to be clear that teachers have the power they need in order to impose discipline.
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At the beginning of the 20th century, the Conservative cabinet was called Hotel Cecil.
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Children themselves know they are being cheated. Ultimately we owe it to our children. They are in school for 190 days a year. Every moment they spend learning is precious. If a year goes by and they are not being stretched and excited, that blights their life.
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Children in dysfunctional homes at risk of abuse are kept in danger for too long because politically correct rules mean we won't challenge unfit parents.
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Democratic self-government has manifestly brought benefits to India, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, South Africa, South Korea, and scores of nations all making their way in the world.
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Don't belittle the hurt that has been caused by the job-destroying machine that is the European Union.
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Ever since going up to university, I have accumulated new debt, and new means of becoming indebted.
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Ed Balls keeps saying that we are committed to scrapping the EMA. I have never said this. We won't.
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Hanging may seem barbarous, but the greater barbarity lies in the slow abandonment of our common law traditions.
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I am in favour of migration, I simply want to control the numbers.
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I absolutely think that David Cameron should stay, whatever the result of the referendum, and I hope that he will stay for the full second term which he was elected to serve.
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I absolutely haven't set out to burnish a reputation as a macho figure by picking fights.
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I believe that the decisions which govern all our lives, the laws we must all obey, and the taxes we must all pay should be decided by people we choose and who we can throw out if we want change.
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I believed and hoped that we would be able to secure a deal with Europe which would enable us to amend free movement.
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I believe that there are better opportunities to keep people safe if we are outside the European Union.
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I can't foretell the future, but I don't believe that the act of leaving the European Union would make our economic position worse, I think it would make it better.
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I don't think there will be a recession as a result of a vote to leave.
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I don't think I'm a revolutionary, and I'd certainly be an unlikely one.
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I don't want to have anyone else as Prime Minister other than David Cameron, and if people spend their time thinking about some of this stuff, then they are getting in the way of two things: one, a fair, open, fact-based referendum debate, and two, the Conservative government continuing afterwards in a stable and secure fashion.
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I found reading Alan Bennett striking because you have this sudden flash of recognition when you read about a boy who has intellectual interests utterly different from his parents.
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I have specifically argued that we need to change our relationship with the European Union by fundamentally reforming not just our relationship but the European Union itself.
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I have a different starting premise from those 100 academics who are so heavily invested in the regime of low expectations and narrow horizons which they have created.
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I prefer to take the view of businesspeople who are actually generating jobs and creating wealth.
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I love my parents in the way most children would: for having been there at every point in my youth and childhood, ready to pick me up when I fell and support me when I stumbled.
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I know myself, from my own background, the E.U. depresses employment and destroys jobs. My father had a business destroyed by the common fisheries policy.
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I recognise that fishing is perhaps not the most high-employment industry in this country, but it's a symbol of what we lost when we entered the E.U.: control over national resources that, if we retained them, we could have husbanded in our interest and, indeed, in the interest of others.
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I sometimes think that the In campaign appears to be operating to a script written by George R.R. Martin and Stephen King - Brexit would mean a combination of 'A Feast for Crows' and 'Misery.'
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I think it's time that we said to people who are incapable of acknowledging that they've ever got anything wrong: 'I'm sorry, you've had your day.' Unelected, unaccountable elites, I'm afraid it's time to say, 'You're fired. We are going to take back control.'
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I think it's appropriate that we simplify, clarify and strengthen, so instead of this nebulousness, we have clarity and authority invested in teachers once more.
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I think overall our national security is strengthened if we are able to make the decisions that we need and the alliances that we believe in outside the current structures of the European Union.
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I think more and more respect has been accorded to teachers, and quite rightly so.
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I think the depressing litany of projections about World War Three and global Brexit recession we hear from the Remain side is not the sort of approach we should take into the future.
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I think the principal purpose of education is to allow each of us, when we become adults, to shape our own future.
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I think the people in this country have had enough of experts with organisations from acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.
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I think, instead of the pessimism of the Remain campaign, we have an opportunity to think of the next generation. If we have faith in their talent, in their generosity, in their hard work, we can, if we leave the E.U., ensure the next generation makes this country once more truly great.
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I wanted to put the national interest before my personal interests.
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I was very lucky in that I had a couple of teachers who were particularly supportive.
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I was encouraged to stand for Parliament by David Cameron, and he has given me the opportunity to serve in what I believe is a great, reforming government. I think he is an outstanding Prime Minister.
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I was a union member in my youth as well and I went on strike, and I don't think it solved anything. It only made the situation worse for everyone involved.
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If events had taken a different course, I could have been one of those children going to a school without the sorts of opportunities that I've subsequently had.
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If you vote to leave the E.U.... we will have additional flexibility to help industries who really need it.
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If we, in the future, have confidence in ourselves, then there's no limit to what we can achieve, and I think the depressing litany... that we hear from the Remain side is not the type of approach we should take into the future.
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I'm clear that we do need to improve what's happening in our schools.
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I'm one of many who have seen their parents and their friends lose their jobs, lose their income, lose their livelihood because of the European Union.
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I'm not interested in defending the position of those who already have money, power and privilege.
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I'm not asking the public to trust me, I'm asking the public to trust themselves.
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In my view, our immigration policy means that we have some people who can come into this country - who we might want to say no to - and others, who we might want to attract, who can't currently come in.
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In England, more than in any comparable country, those who are born poor are more likely to stay poor, and those who inherit privilege are more likely to pass on privilege. For those of us who believe in social justice, this stratification and segregation are morally indefensible.
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It is literally the case that learning languages makes you smarter. The neural networks in the brain strengthen as a result of language learning.
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In this fallen world, I suspect we will never achieve perfection. But that won't stop me trying.
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It's critical that children spend time before they arrive in school in a warm, attractive and inclusive environment, where they can learn through play, master social skills and prepare for formal schooling.
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It is vital that teachers can be paid more without having to leave the classroom. This will be particularly important to schools in the most disadvantaged areas as it will empower them to attract and recruit the best teachers.
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Jamie Dimon and J.P. Morgan are contributing millions to the Remain campaign because they do very nicely, thank you, out of the E.U.
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It's the invincible arrogance of Europe's elites that gets me. These are people who have seen the euro collapse. These are people who are presiding over a migration crisis on their borders, and yet do they ever acknowledge that they need to change? No. They say they need more integration, more of our money, more control over this country.
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It's often the case that successful people invite criticism.
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Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.
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Labor, under their current leadership, want to be the Downtown Abbey party when it comes to educational opportunity. They think working class children should stick to the station in life they were born into - they should be happy to be recognized for being good with their hands and not presume to get above themselves.
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Making promises and then saddling yourself with a political system and a political union that means that you cannot deliver those promises, I fear, doesn't contribute to an atmosphere of trust and confidence in politics.
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Life would have been easier for me if I had taken the path of least resistance.
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My parents adopted me, and then, by the age of four or five, I was asking all sorts of questions, and they found themselves with a son who was interested in the sorts of things that they valued but weren't natural to them.
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My judgment about what is right for this country will always guide me.
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My view is that those challenges will be easier to meet, those risks will be less if we vote to leave because we will have control of the economic levers, we will have control over money we send to the European Union. We will have control over our own laws, and as a result, we will be able to deal with whatever the world throws at us.
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My sister and I know our lives could have been different - radically, unthinkably, irretrievably different - if we had not been adopted. We might have found ourselves in homes without love, stability or kindness. We might have found ourselves in care for much longer, without the secure attachment that being cradled in a mother's arms brings.
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One of the problems we have is children are not in school long enough in the day and during the year.
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No-one is forced to stand for Parliament, no-one is compelled to become a minister. If you take on those roles, which are great privileges, you also take on big responsibilities.
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One thing is undeniable. If we are going to continue to have support for migration, we need to be able to control the numbers.
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One of the reasons why Australia and Canada have support for migration is because they control the numbers.
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One of the problems we've had is that the ICT curriculum in the past has been written for a subject that is changing all the time. I think that what we should have is computer science in the future - and how it fits in to the curriculum is something we need to be talking to scientists, to experts in coding and to young people about.
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Optimists - people who believe in Britain, who believe in democracy - they're the people I believe who will vote for us to leave and take back control.
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Proper history teaching is being crushed under the weight of play-based pedagogy which infantilises children, teachers and our culture.
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People should vote for democracy, and Britain should vote for hope.
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Teachers themselves know if there's a colleague who can't keep control or keep the interest of their class, it affects the whole school.
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Scottish nationalism has grown since we entered the European Union.
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The ability to choose who governs us, and the freedom to change laws we do not like, were secured for us in the past by radicals and liberals who took power from unaccountable elites and placed it in the hands of the people.
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The big shift in approach on education that we are taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.
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The accumulation of cultural capital - the acquisition of knowledge - is the key to social mobility.
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The current leadership of the Labor party react to the idea that working-class students might study the subjects they studied with the same horror that the Earl of Grantham showed when a chauffeur wanted to marry his daughter.
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The common fisheries policy essentially gave other European Union nations unfettered access to our fish stocks and - I would hope - that if we leave the European Union, we can once more see the ports of Peterborough and Fraserhead and Grimsby flourishing, because we will take back control of our territorial waters.
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The first thing I would like to say is that I don't think folk at Westminster - or for that matter at Holyrood - constitute an elite. They are representatives who are elected and who are at the service of voters who can fire them.
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The economic basis on which Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish nationalists made the case for separation was based on an oil price much higher than it is at the moment, so there will be no case for it.
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The decision to trigger Article 50 is in the hands of the next prime minister. If that is me, I will make a judgement as to when is right for Britain, and I won't be hurried or hassled by anyone into pressing that button or triggering that article until I believe it is right for this country.
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The free market is not a god, we have to do everything we can to make the market competitive.
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The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war.
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The majority people in this country are suffering because of our membership of the E.U.
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The Government wants to give young people from every community the chance to learn about the heroism and sacrifice of our great-grandparents, which is why we are organising visits to the battlefields of the Western Front.
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The people who are backing the Remain campaign are people who have done very well, thank you, out of the European Union.
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The people I admire most are those doing outstanding things for the poorest children, such as Michael Wilshaw at Mossbourne academy, Dan Moynihan and all those at the Harris academies, and those at chains such as Ark and the Haberdashers, who are driving up standards in the poorest areas.
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The next leader of this country needs to be someone who believes heart and soul that Britain should be outside the European Union.
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The reason why I'm in Parliament is not really to see my colleagues win power, it is to see us at last in a position where we can give it up.
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The single most important thing in a child's performance is the quality of the teacher. Making sure a child spends the maximum amount of time with inspirational teachers is the most important thing.
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There are economic risks if we leave, economic risks if we remain.
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There are all sorts of people who will say disobliging things about me. I don't mind that. I would rather people said, 'This is a man that sticks to his principles, not a man who's worried about popularity.'
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There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged five. Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English.
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There aren't many contemporary Christian leaders who are both energetic in their condemnation of the crimes of communism and robust in their analysis of the evil of Islamism, but Justin Welby stands out.
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There are great things that Britain can do in the future as a progressive beacon. By voting Leave, we have that opportunity.
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There wasn't a Scottish nationalist MP elected at any general election when we were outside the E.U.
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Unfortunately, the real achievements of children on the ground became debased and devalued because Labor education secretaries sounded like Soviet commissars praising the tractor production figures when we know that those exams were not the rock-solid measures of achievement that children deserve.
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Traditional Anglicans - whether in Nigeria or Nottingham - have been wary, at best, of the acceptance and welcome given to gay men and women and their sexual choices by secular society.
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Well I've been crystal clear that we should not have schools which are set up by extremists whether they're Christian fundamentalists, Islamic fundamentalists or any other sort of outrageous and beyond the pale organization.
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We have, in the E.U., a market rigged in favour of the rich and stacked against the poor, and I think that's wrong.
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We have the opportunity not just to choose our job or profession, but also to choose the sort of life we want to live and the imprint we will leave on others.
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What I think is wrong is spending £9m of taxpayers' money on one particular piece of one-sided propaganda.
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Were I ever alone in the dock, I would not want to be arraigned before our flawed tribunals, knowing my freedom could be forfeit as a result of political pressures. I would prefer a fair trial, under the shadow of the noose.
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What we're doing now is we're saying that individual schools can spend the money on their own priorities, so that head teachers can decide what's truly important, because the big shift in approach on education that we're taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.
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What's a fact is that we give more than £350 million to the European Union and hand over control of that money to the European Union every week.
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When we vote to leave, I think a majority of people in Scotland will also vote to leave as well.
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When I talk to teachers they tell me the things they'd most like from any government are a reduction in bureaucracy, support to help ensure good discipline and a reformed Ofsted.
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You know you don't see hospital consultants going on strike, and I don't believe that teachers and head teachers should. It's within their rights, it's a civil right, but I think it is wrong in terms of the reputation of the profession.
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You come home to find your 17-year-old daughter engrossed in a book. Which would delight you more - if it were 'Twilight' or 'Middlemarch?'
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Whether we vote to leave or remain, there are risks to our future, there are challenges in the global economy.
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You wouldn't tolerate an underperforming surgeon in an operating theatre, or a underperforming midwife at your child's birth. Why is it that we tolerate underperforming teachers in the classroom?
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