Gove? He acted like a suicide bomber
AT THE beginning of February, DC still seems utterly confident Gove is onside. Gove and his family stayed at Chequers during the Christmas break. The question of whether Michael would be ‘In’ or ‘Out’ hung heavy in the air. DC had several conversations with Sarah Vine [Gove’s wife] – during each of which she told him she was sure Michael would support him. It was clearly emphatic enough to assure DC that would be the case.
No10 had always assumed Gove had no leadership ambition and, as a friend of DC and George, he would never do anything to undermine them. I always questioned both assumptions.
Gove told a lot of people he would be loyal to DC to the last, when he would switch his allegiance to George. Yet I once accompanied Gove and the PM on a visit to a school. Michael was preoccupied by what would happen if Boris got into Parliament: would he create an alternative powerbase from the backbenches? It was clear that DC was bored and he said: ‘I don’t know, that’ll be something for George to deal with.’
Gove looked crushed. It struck me that he hated being dismissed as a potential leader by this casual comment, even though DC did not realise what he was doing.
Gove always hated the idea that some saw him as David Cameron’s court jester.
The more I looked at him, the more everything he did appeared to be an act or a performance. His legendary politeness seemed forced, particularly for someone so skilled at dinner table character assassinations.
When DC moved him from Education to the post of Chief Whip, a job Gove had told him he had always wanted to do, Cameron thought he was protecting his friend, giving him an important role while preparing the ground for a later promotion.
Gove accepted, but appeared not to realise it meant a pay cut. Sarah Vine tweeted: ‘A shabby day’s work which Cameron will live to regret.’ Were they really people who wanted the PM to succeed and did not harbour their own ambitions?
In a January Cabinet meeting, Gove made a Pollyanna-ish but oxymoronic speech about allowing ourselves to be a truly national party because we will have people arguing both sides of the case. One of my team leant over to me and whispered: ‘Try schizophrenic.’
By the middle of February, hopes Gove would go for In fade. George had discussed with him the fact that Leave would lead to real damage for the economy. Gove said there would be ‘scarring and burning’ but that we would emerge from that situation and end up far more like Singapore.
Gove is confirmed as Out on the Friday that we reach a deal on the EU renegotiation. Given the news of his supposed friend and close political ally’s decision, DC isn’t angry but there is a tinge of sadness in his voice as he tries to make light of it: ‘That’s him off the Christmas card list.’ He says Michael had always told him he’d let him know in person before others learned. In April, when we discuss Out Ministers trashing Government policies, specifically the NHS and the National Living Wage, DC thinks we need to do all we can to get the press to call out Gove. That would be fine, but he is doing no media, hiding I, suspect, from the question of whether he is the source of the Sun’s ‘Queen Backs Brexit’ story.
WHEN one of the newspapers suggests that Gove should be made deputy PM, DC says: ‘Can you imagine him ever being left in charge of the country?’ I chat to George about whether Gove is setting himself to take over. George isn’t sure Gove thinks he is up to it, ‘But it is being thrust in his direction, so it may be hard to resist.’ At the beginning of June, Gove writes a questionable piece claiming that as Justice Secretary, ‘I have experienced the frustration at our inability to refuse entry to those with a criminal record and even some who are suspected of terrorist links.’ DC is angry with him: ‘I’m going to lose my temper and unleash one on these people on live TV soon.’ Some think Boris choosing to be a key figure in Leave was what did for us but Gove was crucial – mixing an intoxicating cocktail of brilliance and poison. When he stood as a Conservative leadership candidate, he was claiming that, contrary to everything he had always said, he did now think he could and should be Prime Minister. Crucially, he failed to realise that in acting as a political suicide bomber, one of his first victims would be himself. For me Gove is an actor. He strikes a pose according to circumstances. He is capable of vision, wit and charm, and has a verbal dexterity second to none, but his fatal flaw was to be driven by a vaulting ambition and a preparedness to mislead. He is a tragic figure in the Shakespearean sense. He let others down in a way that ultimately crushed himself.