Gove’s vision for the environment is undoubtedly ambitious but it is at odds with much government action – making it real will be a gargantuan task

Who knew? Environment secretary Michael Gove, arch Brexiter and seen just months ago grinning and thumbs up in eco-villain Donald Trump’s lair, turns out to be – in words, at least – a deep green.



His first major speech railed against “corporate greed and devil-take-the-hindmost individualism”, “extractive and exploitative political systems” and the “selfish agenda” of vested interests.

Gove blasted the EU farm subsidy system that puts “resources in the hands of the already wealthy” landowners but praised the EU’s green protections as a “force for good”. The UK, he said, should be the global “home of the highest environmental standards” and green action “central to our national mission”, for both the intrinsic beauty of nature and the prosperity of the economy. Otherwise, Gove said starkly, we face “disaster”.

Michael Gove 'deeply regrets' Trump's approach to Paris climate agreement Read more

A future trade deal with the US must not compromise high environmental or animal welfare standards, he said. Instead, he turned on Trump, “deeply regretting” the US president’s abandoning of the Paris climate change deal and saying “the world’s second biggest generator of carbon emissions can’t simply walk out of the room when the heat is on”.

Green NGOs, so used to being at loggerheads with Conservative environment secretaries, swooned. The “Green Brexit” vision was ambitious and Gove was listening intently, they said. The education “blob” may have been his enemy, but the green blob might be his new best friend.

But like Brexit itself, turning Gove’s dream into a reality will be a gargantuan task. Reinventing the £3bn-a-year farming subsidy regime to reward public goods such as nature, flood protection and soil would tax any government by itself, as the inability even to pay out the EU subsidies on time shows.

Gove admitted that a new fisheries policy would involve “granting access to other countries”, promising very choppy political waters ahead. Promised action to slash plastic pollution will be left strewn on the path of good intentions without radical action to attack a fiendishly complex issue.

Tackling air pollution from diesel vehicles – which Gove wrongly blamed on the EU: national agencies are the regulators – will require facing down the vested interest of the car makers, something ministers have shown zero appetite for so far.

Even as Gove delivered his eloquent words, government action is undermining them. Gove said Brexit gives the opportunity to create “more rigorous and more responsive institutions” than the European commission and the European court of justice that enable the public to hold the government to account on the environment. Yet on Wednesday the government was in court being sued over its changes to legal costs rules which make it much harder to bring environmental cases.

As Gove promised to take on vested interests, the government gave a £130m bung to the most polluting industries, shifting those costs of supporting new clean energy on to the public. He promised to meet the government’s target of planting 11 million trees, but the government is woefully behind with England quite possibly losing not gaining trees.

Can Gove deliver his grand green vision? As he cheerfully admitted himself, the government’s long-awaited 25-year environment plan has already been “longer in gestation than a baby elephant”. Furthermore, the recent Queen’s speech contained no environmental legislation, only bills for agriculture and fisheries.

Nonetheless, Gove’s speech was important, rightly placing the environment at the heart of the nation’s and the world’s wellbeing, prosperity and security. After the vacuum presided over by his predecessors, the unengaged Andrea Leadsom and the anonymous Liz Truss, there is a vision that matches the great challenge. The bar has been set very high and Gove’s ability to leap it matters to us all.