MICHAEL GOVE is in charge of “no deal” preparations — what does that tell us?

Boris Johnson has made Gove the “chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster” — a kind of spare Cabinet minister position — which, because this is Britain, has a stupid knights-of-olde name — and made him responsible for preparing for a possible crash-out from the European Union.

Gove has a seat on the six-man (and it is all male) committee of senior ministers in charge of “exit strategy.”

It is called “XS” for short and meets in the special emergencies-only “Cabinet Office briefing rooms,” or COBR, where meetings are sometimes referred to as “Cobra.”

I think “XS is meeting in Cobra” is supposed to sound all thrilling and James Bond, although the acronyms actually sound like the video games and deodorants you find in a teenage boy’s bedroom.

So far so adolescent. But what can we expect from Gove?

According to Gove himself, he is someone who can make things happen, or in technocrat-speak, he can “deliver.”

When he ran for the Tory leadership this year, Gove claimed on his campaign video that “I’ve proved in government that I can deliver” because “when I was education secretary I made changes.”

But Gove’s time as education secretary, of which he is so proud, actually shows that he is keen on big, absurd ideological claims that lead to a big mess.

One of his most fundamental reforms as education secretary was shifting teacher training out of universities: university teacher courses involve long practical placements in schools mixed with professional education in the university.

But Gove made the alarmist claim that universities exposed trainee teachers to what he called “the Blob,” a dangerous “educational establishment” full of “’60s values” and “Marxist” thought.

Gove wanted the trainees out of the universities and into a new more purely “on-the-job” scheme run directly by schools, called School Direct, which he founded in 2012.

Gove’s plan had a wild reds-under-the-beds justification, but it did not “deliver.”

The latest statistics, released last November, show targets for the number of teachers in secondary school were missed.

The government estimates that we need 19,674 new secondary teachers, but was short by about 17 per cent.

The government has missed the teacher training target for six years in a row. The shortage of teachers — just as pupil numbers rise — means bigger classes and teachers covering lessons outside their main subject: Gove’s new system has never worked.

Numbers would be even worse if Gove had achieved his ambition to end university teacher training, as universities still train around half of teachers.

His time as education secretary shows he can deliver something. But that something will be a floridly justified “reform” that doesn’t work.

Another feature of Gove’s teacher training reforms is that he put one of his underqualified posh mates in charge.

He put a man called Charlie Taylor, who was an Eton contemporary of David Cameron, in charge of the teacher training reform.

Gove and his supporters wildly exaggerated Taylor’s qualifications. Anyone who was fool enough to believe the hype would have been disappointed by the results, as the teacher training “reforms” failed at the start and have carried on failing.

Ideological, but inefficient was a broader theme in the Department for Education under Gove: he hated local authorities, as these democratic structures could give Labour councils a lot of influence on schools.

So he sped up the transfer to academies. He liked these because they put a bunch of cronies, Tories, religious fanatics and businessmen in charge of schools.

Gove even tried to hand over some schools to Rupert Murdoch — a plan that fell apart in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.

Academy schools are overseen directly by the Department of Education.

However, Gove also slimmed down the number of staff in the Department for Education itself, so there were fewer staff to oversee the larger number of schools under their direct control.

Consequently academies have delivered more scandals involving misspent funds and poor education.

So what the Department for Education record tells us is that Gove will “deliver” a programme based on hiring his posh chums to follow a sloganeering, ideological but badly organised programme of government.

Diversity in July

THEN home secretary Sajid Javid argued “diversity on boards is essential in making our public services even stronger” as he hosted a special event to “encourage and develop more talent from minority groups and ensure public positions are opened up to everyone.”

But the government’s own recent appointments only look diverse if Tory leaders are considered a minority group.

In June Liam Fox appointed Stephen O’Brien as a non-executive on the Department for International Trade’s (DIT) board.

O’Brien is from that well-known minority: former government ministers. He was a Tory MP from 1999 to 2012, and from 2010-2012 a development minister.

He currently has a few corporate jobs, including a seat on Savannah Petroleum, an Africa-focused oil firm.

A seat on the DIT board won’t hurt O’Brien’s career, while having his department overseen by a fellow Tory could make Fox’s life easier.

Also in June, then communities secretary James Brokenshire reappointed Edward Lister as chairman of government housing quango Homes England: Lister was chief of staff to Boris Johnson when he was London mayor, and before that leader of Tory Wandsworth Council.

Lister had already been named as part of Johnson’s leadership campaign before he was reappointed chairman of Homes England.

Lister had to be temporarily suspended immediately after his appointment, because “political neutrality” rules meant he couldn’t run Johnson’s campaign and have the “non-political” job as head of Homes England.

In July the Homes England board found a way to fill Lister’s shoes. It made board member Simon Dudley “senior independent director” with a job of “deputising for Sir Edward Lister during his short leave of absence while he carries out specific work related to the Conservative Party leadership contest.”

Dudley is also the leader of the Tory council in Theresa May’s own backyard, Windsor and Maidenhead. Dudley showed his commitment to housing when he told the police to clear the streets of Windsor of “rough sleeping” before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding, claiming street sleeping was due to “a life choice not homelessness.”

Even fellow Tory councillors were outraged into launching an (unsuccessful) vote of confidence in Dudley. How did Dudley get onto the Homes England board? He was appointed in 2017 by Javid, who was communities secretary that year.