I AM always surprised when a spat between ministers becomes a news item.

Of course, there are bound to be disagreements, even passionate disagreements, between senior politicians on how best to achieve the same objective. When these disagreements break cover it is usually due to the zeal of staff and close supporters acting as cheerleaders, rather than the principals themselves. Certainly, this was the case in the most recent row between Theresa May and Michael Gove. The issue over which there has been a difference of emphasis is important: how we deal with the problem of violent Islamism.

We have suffered terrorist outrages from this source and we have been very fortunate that the efficiency of our security services have prevented many others. The civil war in Syria has the potential to radicalise the jihadist tendency among a tiny but growing minority of British Muslims to an even greater extent than the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The difference over how to deal with the problem can be summed up in the question: is it better to wait for crocodiles to emerge from a swamp before killing them, or is it better to drain the swamp?

Mr Gove published a robust treatise in 2007, Celsius 7/7, and he is unmistakeably in the “drain the swamp” camp. He attacked liberal judges for setting rights and liberties above the threat to the life of the nation. This was his conclusion: “We need a commitment to build a truly inclusive model of British citizenship in which divisive separatist identities are challenged and rejected.” Arguably it is divisive and separatist identities that were being nurtured by the governors of the Birmingham schools that are at the centre of current row.

Set against the Gove approach are those who believe that arming our security services with greater powers is a betrayal of the tolerant and open society we are trying to defend.

Equally, interfering in religious and cultural sensitivities will have the very reverse effect of inflaming passions rather than draining them.

I am in the uncomfortable position of standing somewhere in the middle. I certainly am on the side of stronger powers for our security services and I believe in robustly promoting our own civic values in our schools.

We need to do so with just a measure of humility, however, for gender equality and freedom of religion are relatively recent developments in the history of Christendom.