Michael Gove has praised Theresa May for doing a "fantastic" and "very fine" job, after the prime minister ordered the pair to bury the hatchet following a furious row about tackling Islamic extremism.
David Cameron has ordered all the facts to be laid before him after a bitter briefing war between the education secretary and home secretary burst into the open, overshadowing the final Queen's speech before the general election.
The row blew up after quotes emerged from a Department of Education source, which later turned out to be Gove himself, accusing the Home Office of failing to "drain the swamp" of Islamic extremism by tackling its ideological roots.
May's camp hit back with a letter questioning whether Gove's department had ignored warnings about Islamic extremism in Birmingham schools for years.
As he left his home on Thursday morning, Gove was asked by the BBC whether he was still at loggerheads with May. The pair did not turn up to the frontbench to hear the Queen's speech on Wednesday
"Theresa May is doing a fantastic job," Gove said. "There's a lot going on. No, absolutely not. She's doing a very fine job."
Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, was also dispatched to the BBC's Today programme to argue that there were no "massive divides" across Whitehall.
"Tensions and debates within Whitehall are not unusual; the fact is that we are pussycats in comparison with the last government if you remember the battles between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown," he said.
"But look, I'm a member of the extremism taskforce, I've worked with both Theresa May and Michael Gove on these issues … there is an awful lot of consensus in government about what we need to do."
Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem deputy prime minister, also showed a degree of coalition loyalty by refusing to comment on the state of relations between Gove and May.
However, he also appeared to suggest Gove's approach was misguided.
"I think language about war on ideology from an office in Whitehall, or draining the swamp, you can't do that from an office in Whitehall. It is people in the communities who are the best antidotes to extremists. It isn't politicians who can suddenly declare they are going to put an end to an ideology they don't like," he told his LBC 97.3 Radio show.
The prime minister raised his concerns with Gove in a brief meeting in Downing Street on Wednesday morning in advance of the Queen's speech after No 10 awoke to headlines about a major falling-out between two of the cabinet's heaviest hitters.
Cameron, who left London shortly after the Queen's speech for the G7 summit in Brussels, has asked for a full briefing on all the contacts between May and Gove to be placed on his desk by the time he returns home later this week, amid a feeling at senior levels that there was fault on both sides.
The row exploded when the Times reported that the home secretary and the education secretary were "at war" over the government's strategy in tackling extremism. The Times quoted an education department source as saying that Charles Farr, the Home Office official in charge of security and counter-terrorism, was wrong to target only violent extremists. Gove believes that all extremists, whether or not they support violence, should be tackled.
Gove, who wrote a polemical book, Celsius 7/7, in 2006 on the dangers posed by extremism, told Cameron that he was the source quoted in the Times. He said he had returned to the newspaper where he once worked for a 70-minute lunch on Monday and had made the remarks in response to questions about the "Trojan horse" alleged infiltration of schools in Birmingham by extremists.
The admission by Gove that he was the source for the Times story was seen as important in Whitehall, where it had initially been assumed that the education secretary had deliberately decided to launch a strike against May on the eve of the Queen's speech.
Gove told Cameron that he had simply answered questions from the Times editorial board in an open manner and in a way that was entirely consistent with the prime minister's speech on extremism at the Munich security conference in 2011.
The prime minister made clear to Gove that he was deeply disappointed that the row had overshadowed the Queen's speech. But eyebrows in Whitehall were also raised at the response from the home secretary's office.
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Gove had written to the prime minister, in a letter copied to May and all members of the committee, after they failed to reach agreement at the November meeting. A compromise was then agreed.
The letter from May sent on Tuesday dealt with the more narrow issue of a voluntary code of practice for madrasas and supplementary schools. The letter addressed the policy but then had a final paragraph, likened to a letter from a shadow secretary of state, which posed a series of hostile questions about the failure of the education department to tackle extremism in Birmingham schools.
Tory MPs lined up on either side of the May/Gove battle, which is being fuelled by the eventual succession to the prime minister. Crispin Blunt, the former prisons minister, accused Gove of using Britain's national security council to promote "neocon" ideas that could encourage moderates to move towards Islamist extremism.
One senior Tory said the home secretary was irritated that Gove writes to the prime minister when he struggles to win the argument in cabinet committees. The MP said: "It would be wrong to say that Theresa is at the end of her tether. She always keeps going. It is cold fury rather than losing her temper."
Supporters of a potential leadership bid by George Osborne, the chancellor, whose numbers include Gove, believe the home secretary is stamping her mark on the party. "This is Theresa laying out her standard," one minister said.
"People admire Theresa but there aren't really any May-ites prepared to go into the trenches with her. In contrast George has legions of supporters whose numbers are increasing as the economy improves. Michael is so close to George they are joined at the hip."
To summarise, the argument seems to be about strategy and tactics. Does one attack the crocodiles or "drain the swamp"?
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/05/theresa-may-fantastic-job-michael-gove-denies-cabinet-rift
Topic: Gove v May