ONE can be forgiven a degree of schadenfreude that Michael Gove’s ideological zealotry, which has thrown the English educational system into deep disarray, has now at last turned to consume himself.   

The charge sheet against Gove is clear.   

His sensitive touch in dealing with alleged extremism was expressed with his characteristic restraint as “not waiting till the crocodiles get near the boat, but draining the swamp.”    

That then led to his appointing a former head of the Met’s counter-terrorism unit to investigate the Birmingham allegations, a completely over-the-top and wildly inappropriate response.   

As he breathed fire and brimstone, it then emerged that the DfE had all along known about the Birmingham goings-on since 2010, but had done nothing about it.   

And the whole current episode has shown that Gove is the last person to be suited to dealing with Islamist influence in schools since he wrote a book called Celsius 7/7 in 2007 which is an excoriating diatribe against Islam, the results of which we now see.   

Like Blair, whom Gove much admired, he has a Manichaean, utterly polarised view of good and evil, in this case between Western liberalism and Islamist fundamentalism.   

But the Birmingham problems — and there are serious issues there which need to be addressed — will not be properly tackled in such lurid terms.

It is Gove’s ideological hotheadedness that has blown this issue out of all proportion.   

There is no evidence whatever of a jihadist plot, and indeed extremism only emerged as an issue at all on day 40 of this long-running saga.   

What has been revealed, which is serious enough, in the five academies now placed in special measures is such practices as manipulating some subjects to fit with conservative Islamist teaching, a “madrasa curriculum” in personal development, the abandonment of arts, humanities and music in primary year six, classroom segregation with girls sitting behind boys, and governors chosen clearly not based on their skills.   

These failings should certainly be tackled in an adequate but proportionate manner, but it should be understood that such problems are not confined to Muslim-dominated schools but have arisen in the same manner in evangelical Christian-run institutions and ultra-orthodox Jewish schools.

But what is most striking is that the five schools at the centre of this row are not faith schools at all but state-run academies.   

And therein lies the root of Gove’s failure in educational policy.   

If you allow a whole range of academy providers and marginalise local authorities, meaningful oversight collapses.   

Gove’s legacy is plummeting teacher morale, acute shortage of primary school places, the absurdities reported in the free schools programme and now the inflaming of the Birmingham row because proper local control of schools has been all but extinguished.

A JUDGE has ordered that the criminal trial of two people accused of terrorism — or rather of “preparing for terrorism” — should be held in secret and that even the existence of this trial should be kept secret on the grounds provided by the crown prosecution that “there was a serious possibility that the trial may not be able to go ahead.”   

That looks suspiciously like blackmail. And it is an extreme unprecedented departure from open justice for defendants to be anonymous, a court meeting in utter secrecy and the press and public wholly excluded from the proceedings.   

It cannot be regarded as consistent with the rule of law, and it is certainly a defiance of democratic accountability. Secrecy breeds injustice and punitiveness, especially when it is caused by fear that puts the governing class at risk.   

It also raises the question not only whether we can trust the judges with our freedoms but also who should take the final decision when the usual mantras are trotted out about “national security” or “war on terror” — is it really the judges or should it be the Information Commissioner who is used to dealing with what should or should not be divulged?

What is alarming is how little pushback there has been against the excesses of the authoritarian state.   

There is no countervailing force from the executive — indeed it is one of the prime drivers of this secrecy — and there has been little parliamentary resistance.   

This is all the more remarkable when the Snowden revelations have now been reinforced by Vodafone declaring that secret wires are in use which allow government agencies to listen to all conversations on the company’s networks and that they are widely used in some of the 29 countries where Vodafone operates.  

This is done in complete secrecy without any official warrant being required so that there is no audit trail of accountability.

What is clearly needed is for these direct-access wires to be disconnected and for the laws that give them legality to be repealed.   

Insofar as this state hacking activity continues at all, it should be limited to extreme circumstances where the survival of the state is genuinely at risk.   

Also, states should publish data each year on the number of warrants issued, distinguishing between content and metadata (location, times and dates and persons communicated with).   

And companies should publish the number of warrants they receive from state agencies, which software companies have already begun to do, though telecoms companies which depend on government licences to operate have been less inclined. But Vodafone has set an important precedent and they should follow it.

Michael Meacher is Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton. For more of his writing visit www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog.