Michael Gove accuses newspaper of portraying Britain as ‘insular backwater’ The UK leveling up secretary has described journalists at The New York Times as “useful idiots” over a podcast by the outlet accusing him of prejudice against Muslims. Michael Gove accused “The Trojan Horse Affair” podcast of portraying the UK “as an insular backwater whose inhabitants are drowning in a tide of nostalgia, racism and bad food,” according to The Guardian. Gove’s statement was part of the foreword of a new “documentary record” about the Trojan horse scandal published by the Policy Exchange think tank. The NYT-sponsored podcast series, released in February, was critical of Gove’s involvement in the 2013-14 Trojan horse scandal in Birmingham, when the city’s council received documents alleging a conspiracy to Islamize schools. Gove and his co-author, former Home Office special adviser Nick Timothy, slammed the NYT for taking “a peculiar stance towards Britain in recent years.” The NYT podcast revealed that authorities in Birmingham repeatedly warned Gove, who was England’s education secretary when the controversy started, that the anonymous letter was “bogus.” Gove and Timothy’s Policy Exchange report includes a timeline of events leading up to the anonymous letter, the investigations conducted by public bodies, media coverage of the original affair and comment on the NYT “The Trojan Horse Affair” podcast. The podcast questioned both the letter and the UK government’s handling of the controversy, which included a storm of allegations and disciplinary procedures, such as banning a school governor from working in education as well as lifetime professional bans for some teachers. In his report, Gove wrote that the podcast series “was replete with errors and omissions,” describing it as a “travesty” that took the side of activists seeking to undermine the UK government’s narratives about the affair. The Times highlighted in 2014 obvious errors in the anonymous Birmingham letter, suggesting it was “a fake, including a plot to oust a headteacher who had been removed 20 years earlier.”