Michael Gove – A Betrayal of Trust.
Last night, Michael Gove apologised for what he saw as ‘errors and mistakes’, he acknowledged that a £500 hotel bill ‘was excessive’ and a ‘misjudgement’. There will be some who say he is exonerated, he has apologised, he is ‘one of the good guys’.
I believe that there is a far more crucial charge to be leveled against him than a few ‘errors and mistakes’ at the taxpayer’s expense. He is guilty of a betrayal of the trust placed in him as the Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, a role for which he is paid by the taxpayer.
We look to our MPs to speak for us, to have a voice where we have none. That is their primary duty, and should be their first consideration. Other occupations, in Michael Gove’s case, that of journalist and on-line pundit, should take a back seat.
We have (perhaps had) in this country, a child who has become a metaphor for every vulnerable child, a child who encapsulates everything that a spokesman for children should have at the forefront of their mind. A child that the Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families should indubitably, incontrovertibly, irredeemably, be championing the vulnerability of and supporting the cause of.
That child is Madeleine McCann.
Those of us who have followed the case of Madeleine McCann on a European level, have become used to the discrepancy between the version of events peddled in the UK media, and the undisputed facts available from the Portuguese Authorities. We understand the difficulties faced by journalists under the UK’s draconian libel laws, we understand too that economic considerations play a part in the coverage of the McCann case.
Michael Gove is first and foremost a parliamentarian, with the absolute privilege of speech that permits. It is a gross betrayal of that trust that he seeks to swim with the common herd of journalists, and sanctify the behaviour of the McCann parents. It is a gross betrayal of trust that he fills his column inches – and thus his pockets – with hand wringing anguish on behalf of the parents, and fails to speak up for the child.
Why had I chosen to support this cause, at this time, in this way? A huge part of it is simple identification with the McCanns. Madeleine’s fourth birthday fell in the same week as my daughter’s. Her father’s background has similarities with my own. The photographs of Madeleine look uncannily like our own little girl. […] Trying to imagine what the McCann family must be facing is at once, totally, instantly, possible and terrifyingly, unfathomably, distant. I have found it almost impossible to read, or watch, any of the news coverage because once my mind starts to reflect on what the family are facing the enormity of it all is too much to take.
He seeks to reinforce the innocence of the parents with the authority of the church:
John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, reminded us that Kate and Gerry McCann weren’t just probably innocent. They are totally innocent. And they will be until the situation ever arises that they have been tried, and found guilty, in a forum better designed to arrive at the truth than the media. One thing is certain: they have lost a daughter and their daily suffering must be torture.
When he should be standing up in parliament and speaking for Madeleine by saying these words that no UK journalist dare utter:
The last people to see her alive were her parents who left her and her siblings unattended in an unsecured apartment.
Her parents refused to answer the questions put to them by the Portuguese Police. Her parents and their colleagues declined to return to Portugal for a reconstruction of the crime arranged by the Portuguese Police.
Her parents declined to request that the Portuguese Police continue the investigation.
Until such time as her parents remedy these failures, there should be no more hand wringing articles in the UK press sympathising with their ‘pain’. There should be no more maudlin ‘mockumentaries’ seeking to answer the case for the defence of the parents via the air waves.
That is what a parliamentarian is for, Mr Gove, and you are betraying the trust we all place in you, you are particularly betraying the trust of a vulnerable child. Now go and do your job.
Let me remind you of your own words:
In a landscape shaped by moral relativism, in which it is impossible for authority to make judgments lest it be thought pious, hypocritical or harsh, we provide no consistent standard by which we expect people to live […] But what future are we building for the next generation when there are so many parents now, whatever their age, who never really grow up?
Michael Gove has an e-mail address: GOVEM@parliament.uk
H e works for you. You pay him.
Ask him!
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May 12, 2009 at 3:06 pm -
I watched the first five minutes of the McCann’s own reconstruction of the night in PdL when their daughter went ‘missing’.
Mrs M stood at the door of Madelaine’s room and described her own actions when she did an inspection. I forget the time. She said she initially ‘looked into the room’ which was darkened and seemed ’satisfied’ that all was in order. As she was about to leave the entrance of the room she noticed the curtains flapping and then said that the door was more ajar than before. She then went into the room and horror upon horrors Madelaine was missing. She shouted etc.
I said to my wife “She is lying”. She asked why.(We have four children and were used to checking on the children if we were in others’ house etc)
I said. “A mother who comes back to the house from a restaurant to check on a child will invariably go right into the room, stand next to the bed, check breathing, check bedclothes and generally make assurance doubly sure that all is in order. I found it incredible that Mrs McC on first checking simply stared into a darkened room, prepared to leave then lo and behold when she sees curtains flapping decideds to do what any parent would have done immediately. Check the child in the bed.
There is something fishy about her conduct or recollection. I stopped watching. My wife said that Mrs M did not appear to love her children. She has watched this saga ab inito and is unable to believe that Mrs M is telling the whole truth whatever that is.
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May 12, 2009 at 6:33 pm -
To read this on little Madeleine Mccann’s birthday makes me feel a little better. At long last, some words to indicate that the British people may and WILL ask the necessary questions for their paid politians to answer.
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May 12, 2009 at 9:29 pm -
Well, I always checked my own children whenever I went into a room where they were sleeping – at home before I went to bed or went to the loo in the middle of the night, on holiday in hotels, gites, caravans, etc, etc, at relatives’ homes…
Even now, with a grandosn of 10, I still check on him when he’s staying with us.
I could also never resist tucking them in or straightening out the covers.
It’s just part of that set of instinctive parental/paternal/maternal behaviours that I’ve seen in myself and every other parent I know personally at that level.
With Kate McCann that set of behaviours just seems totally absent. -
May 12, 2009 at 11:34 pm -
I have emailed Gove several times ……….. and told him that the Tories will be down by at least two votes in the next general election if they don’t get off their arses and get TB and GB on the block over this affair. Otherwise I must be forgiven for thinking that they are all pissing into the same set of bag-pipes.
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May 13, 2009 at 8:44 am -
Anna Raccoon
A standing ovation for you Anna Raccoon.
Well said and well written.
Such a shame there aren’t more like you.
Thank you -
May 13, 2009 at 10:46 am -
Yesterday was my daughter’s 13th birthday. It would also have been Madeleine McCann’s 6th birthday if she hadn’t disappeared off the face of the earth under circumstances which beggar belief. I don’t care for picking over the back-covering ‘check’ details offered by her parents and their friends because the children should never have been left alone in an unlocked apartment in the first place.
Anna quotes from Mr Gove’s column: “One thing is certain: they have lost a daughter”.
Lost or misplaced? To misplace means ‘to put in the wrong position or hands’; surely the McCann children were ‘put in the wrong position’ if arrangements for their care allowed for the alleged abduction by stranger to be offered as an explanation of the disappearance of a 3 year old girl?
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