FDR would be rolling in his grave at the idea that Michael Gove might be a New Dealer

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Micheal Gove's Ditchley lecture, given yesterday, was premised on the idea that the Tories are going to deliver a New Deal for the 'Forgotten Man' - a term with connotations that Gove has clearly not acquainted himself with.

But he had also forgotten FDR's opinion of Tories. This comes from his acceptance of nomination speech to the Democrat Convention in 1932:

There are two ways of viewing the Government's duty in matters affecting economic and social life. The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small business man. That theory belongs to the party of Toryism, and I had hoped that most of the Tories left this country in 1776.

But it is not and never will be the theory of the Democratic Party. This is no time for fear, for reaction or for timidity. Here and now I invite those nominal Republicans who find that their conscience cannot be squared with the groping and the failure of their party leaders to join hands with us; here and now, in equal measure, I warn those nominal Democrats who squint at the future with their faces turned toward the past, and who feel no responsibility to the demands of the new time, that they are out of step with their Party.

Micheal Gove can never be a New Dealer.

Hat tip: Nicholas Guyatt


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