News about Michael Gove

When it comes to the lives of the rich and famous, there seems to be no limit to the amount of bonkers behaviour that money can buy. The latest? The 'no-split divorce'. Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported that England footballer Kyle Walker and his childhood sweetheart Annie would formally end their marriage, with Kyle giving a large chunk of his estimated £27million fortune to her, but they would continue living together as man and wife while co-parenting their children.

Few Conservatives could have got away with Health Secretary Wes Streeting's comments on fat unemployed people. It may help that Mr Streeting is himself no stranger to the biscuit barrel. There is also a daring about Mr Streeting - perhaps the cancer made him fearless - that sets him apart. He is Matt Hancock without the wandering hands, Michael Gove with a London accent. In debate he is embarrassingly more nimble than the current Prime Minister.

ANDREW PIERCE: Has arch-Remainer Sir Nick Clegg (left), one-time leader of the LibDems, changed his mind on Brexit? Clegg, now earning a reputed salary of $15 million (£11.5 million) as president of global affairs at the social media giant Meta, has been wailing about regulations in, you've guessed it, his once beloved EU. Clegg is masterminding the roll out of Meta's Artificial ­Intelligence (AI) model across the globe, including the UK. But the software has hit a brick wall in Europe. 'We're expanding Meta AI to more countries, including Brazil and the UK,' says Clegg. 'Unfortunately, we still can't roll it out in the EU because of the regulatory ­uncertainty we face there.'

The battle to become the next Tory leader intensified after favourite Kemi Badenoch furiously denied claims that she had placed the cost of a personal chauffeur on the taxpayer. Ms Badenoch dismissed as 'spurious nonsense' allegations that the £459,000, three-and-a-half-year contract to hire a non-Government driver while in the Cabinet had placed her at risk of being bugged. It came as her supporters questioned the leadership credentials of remaining rival Robert Jenrick - with one mocking him for 'trying to appear butch'.

Education Secretary Bridget ­Phillipson said youngsters will get formulae and equations on sheets to save having to memorise them. The measures were first introduced in 2022 to take into account disruption to pupils' education caused by repeated lockdowns. Last year the previous ­Conservative government said the sheets would be scrapped in future as part of a return to ­rigorous assessment. However, yesterday Ms ­Phillipson insisted they should stay in place because the ­pandemic 'continues to have an impact'. Ms Phillipson made the announcement in a letter to Sir Ian Bauckham (inset), chief regulator at the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual).

Incurably fond as I am of Michael Gove , I think I speak for several Tory ex-PMs if I say it is always a good idea to watch him in the wing mirror. He and I came across each other at the Oxford Union, and I admired his brilliantly improvised Scottish orotundity. He was owlish, tweedy, often quite drunk, and then, as now, wonderfully polite. He had hung around at my college, and from time to time we would go to the same preposterous debating club dinners.

Boris Johnson today reveals he will use his sensational new memoir to set out what he 'really thinks' about Rishi Sunak - and 'how and why I learned to keep my old friend Michael Gove firmly in the wing mirror'. The former Prime Minister's new book, Unleashed, will be serialised on MailOnline from tomorrow and in the Daily Mail from Saturday, and is already tipped to become the political memoir of the century.

Things are not always easy for the children of politicians. Believe me, I know. One of the biggest bones of contention throughout my marriage to the former ­Cabinet minister Michael Gove was the toxic influence of ­politics on family life. Absence is the most obvious issue, given the House of Commons' arcane late-night voting practices. Constituency dinners and other events are another, as they invariably take place in the evenings and weekends. Unless you exercise iron discipline, it's very easy to let the all-consuming ­business of power take over. Then there's the harassment. Because of their father's roles in government and the general feverish atmosphere around politics, my two children often found themselves the object of other people's displaced anger.

Downsizing makes sense. After all, most people need to free up a little extra cash after they stop working and the kids have flown the nest. But where in the country to move to? Obviously, the exact amount of equity released by moving to a smaller house varies from place to place - as does what each town, village or city can offer.

Ten Tory former environment secretaries including Michael Gove , Mark Spencer and Andrea Leadsom have urged ministers to put more funding into farming. It comes after reports last week that money in the Environment Land Management Scheme (Elms) budget was at risk as the new government tries to find cost savings to fill a £22billion black hole. Elms was set up after Brexit to replace the EU Common Agricultural Policy, which subsidised measures including 'local nature recovery' habitat creation on farms. Mark Spencer, the former farming minister, told MailOnline: 'The EU's Common Agricultural Policy was bad for farmers and bad for the environment. Replacing it with our own system of rewarding farmers for taking steps to protect nature and build their resilience is one of the biggest wins from Brexit.'

No fault evictions will finally be banned for England's 11 million renters under new proposals first floated by the previous Tory government. Labour will today bring forward the Renters' Rights Bill to drive up standards in the private rented sector and hold landlords to account for poor practice. Michael Gove, the previous Conservative Housing Secretary, had championed similar flagship reforms as key to fulfilling the party's 2019 manifesto promise to outlaw Section 21 'no fault' evictions

Researchers at University College London (UCL) found that primary free schools led to 'modest increases' in segregation for pupils speaking English as an additional language, black, Asian and ethnic minority students, and also white British students. The researchers said 'the trend in England has been toward decreasing segregation' but children in areas with primary free schools are increasingly divided by ethnicity as pupils are less likely to meet peers from different backgrounds at school. They attributed this to free schools creating 'new options for parents to choose schools that are more homogenous than their local area, including both 'self-segregation' by minority-ethnic parents and perceived 'white flight'. The introduction of free primaries reduced student numbers in neighbouring schools, which could lead to cuts in their staff and curriculum, according to the analysis.

Ours is an ageing land. A quarter of Scots today are 60 or older. Children under 14 account for a scant 16 per cent of the population. The tax base, our population still in employment, contracts annually.

Yesterday at 8am, hundreds of thousands of 18-year-olds - and their anxious parents - found out their A-level results, with the joy or despair that followed. Those grades were the culmination of years of hard slog, exams and assessments - but what exactly did that one day really tell us about these teens' achievements? After the chaos of grades during the pandemic and the correction in last year's results, many parents may be questioning just this. As a result, this provocative new book by Sammy Wright, an experienced teacher and former member of the UK Government 's Social Mobility Commission aims to ask us: just what is school for?

Chancellor Rachel Reeves was today told she has 'serious questions to answer' over a growing 'cash for jobs' row at the Treasury. Her department came under further pressure over the appointment of a banker, who previously donated more than £20,000 to senior Labour politicians, to a top role. Ian Corfield, who last year gave £5,000 to Ms Reeves prior to her becoming Chancellor, was recently made a director at the Treasury. The row over his appointment deepened after it emerged the civil service watchdog was not informed of his past donations when it approved his appointment. Mr Corfield joined the Treasury after working as a senior business adviser to Labour between January and July. There is no suggestion any rules have been broken.

My first encounter with Sue Gray - the woman at the heart of Government now generating more headlines than any elected politician - was when I was a health minister. I had to chair one of the most challenging meetings of my career, and Sue, then Cabinet Office Deputy Permanent Secretary, helped me to prepare. Emotions were running high, with many of those attending becoming upset. I couldn't leave my chair but, instinctively, looked across the room towards Sue.

Kemi Badenoch insisted she is not 'controlled' by Michael Gove as she faced down critics at a Conservative leadership hustings. The Shadow Housing Secretary was confronted by Tory members over Mr Gove's backing of her campaign. According to sources in the room, she told them: 'There have been people going out saying she's being controlled by Michael. That he's putting things in her head and so on. I can tell you now nobody controls me and nobody puts anything in my head.' Ms Badenoch, widely considered the frontrunner in the race to succeed Rishi Sunak , said at the hustings in Cirencester: 'He supported me because I supported him in the 2019 leadership', but she added that they have had 'healthy disagreements'.

A banker who donated more than £20,000 to senior Labour politicians has landed a top civil service job in the Treasury, it emerged yesterday. Ian Corfield, who donated thousands of pounds to now Chancellor Rachel Reeves , has been made a director in her department. The disclosure, first reported by Politico, risks sparking a 'cash for jobs' row although there is no suggestion any rules have been broken. Henry Newman, a former adviser to Michael Gove , said: 'If Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak had made this sort of appointment, I can imagine the howls of outrage that would have followed.'

Second homes have never been so popular. Before lockdown, just 3 per cent of Britons had a retreat in the countryside or the coast - somewhere to recharge the batteries. But locals blame the incomers for escalating property prices. The residents of harbour towns get squeezed out to live on the outskirts. And young people who work all year round are unable to get on the housing ladder. We've spoken with locals, estate agents, second homeowners and councillors to reveal the UK's most welcoming and unwelcoming towns and villages.

Since Monday, when the horror emerged on the Merseyside, protesters have brought chaos to the streets of Britain, breaking police officers' bones, setting fire to community buildings and looting businesses. Far-right and neo-Nazi groups are said to have sparked the street protests, using social media to stir up anger and release calls for hundreds to take part in anti-immigration demonstrations. It has led to men with Swastikas tattooed on their body appearing in residential suburbs, while others have been filmed raising the Nazi salute or chanting facist slogans.

There is endless advice about packing for a warm holiday but nothing to help deal with the complexity of taking a break in the British countryside. Heading off to the sunshine of Greece or Spain makes choosing the contents of the suitcase relatively straightforward. It's going to be hot, and unlikely to rain. Women won't need the pair of high heels we will pack anyway, and because we're used to our own climate we will bring a cardi 'just in case'. But packing for a staycation is so much more complicated. Last week, I spent four days in Yorkshire in a spot lodged between the sea and the moors. Experience has shown that no matter the forecast, the actual weather is unlikely to comply.

A mother who spent two years in unimaginable pain with terminal pancreatic cancer who couldn't face going on any longer. A sister in her 50s with a deadly brain disease which left her reliant on a feeding tube and constant painkillers, who asked her family for a way to hasten the end. And a prostate cancer patient who saw his father suffer an agonising death caused by the same disease, who is now resolute that he will not follow the same painful path. Few among us would fail to be moved by these harrowing stories, which have poured in from Mail on Sunday readers this month. But what is far more controversial is the point they are making - all support a change in the law to permit assisted dying.

For a brief moment, the Tories ' dilapidated attack machine sputtered back into life, writes DAN HODGES. 'The King's Speech was the most Left-wing in years,' the briefing declared. 'Nationalisation, new powers for the unions, abolition of heredity peers.' The Financial Times followed its lead. Sir Keir Starmer was portrayed sporting a Che Guevara beret, above an article heralding 'Starmer's never-ending insurgency'. The Prime Minister was set to embrace his 'inner radical', it claimed. Well if he is, that radicalism is set to be revealed via his political audacity, rather than the channelling of any great socialist ideology. Because the truth is that the new Prime Minister's first programme for government is one of the most conservative - and Conservative - ever unveiled by a Labour administration.

Videos have appeared on TikTok of parents advising others on how to 'navigate around the fines', the minimum of which are due to rise from £60 per child to £80 from August. But some families argue that they have saved thousands by going away during term time rather than the school holidays - saying it was worth paying the fines. Laura Melling said it was a 'no brainer' when she decided to take her daughters out of school during term time to save £3,000 on their family holiday to Egypt . Mrs Melling and her husband Paul from Leyland, Lancashire, were each fined £120 by their council after taking their children out of primary school. The nurse, who went viral on TikTok in a video about the fine which has been viewed 1.4 million times, said the term-time holiday ban was 'ridiculous'.