Michael Gove & Lenin
While I most frequently identify as a heterodox Trotskyist I have no problem with being called a Leninist (Victor Serge tendency). These are points for another post and another time.
Relevant to the moment is that Michael Gove who today pronounced on extremism in Parliament was and perhaps still is a fan of Lenin. I think it most unlikely that Gove’s understanding of Lenin and mine in anyway coincides and I certainly don’t regard him as an extremist in the sense Gove is currently using the term. Indeed historically so distanced was a Tory Government from Lenin that Britain played a role in the White Armies that tried to overthrow the Russian Revolution after 1917.
So what is the Gove-Lenin connection?
The late Professor Norman Stone (Age) who specialised in modern history and in particular Eastern Europe, wrote a good deal about Lenin, far from all of it critical. An inveterate smoker Stone did however complain that the Sealed Train was the first ever non-smoking one.
Stone taught Dominic Cummings at Oxford and Cummings is also known to be a fan of Lenin. Not of course of his politics but of his leadership and organisational skills. Cummings was an advisor to Michael Gove, who has or had a bust of Lenin in his office
Perhaps Gove should put himself on his own little list
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