I asked Boris if he thought Michael Gove was leaking... Do bears s*** in the woods? he replied
MICHAEL Gove and I had many rows when I worked for him in the Department for Education. Most of them ended with him reminding me he was the boss.
But at least he was in his radical phase – before he became a champion of net zero and antigrowth policies – and we agreed on the fundamentals of education policy. So when David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister after the Brexit referendum in June 2016, I called Gove to tell him I thought he should run.
He immediately declined, saying he was backing Boris and I should join his campaign.
I didn’t know Boris well. But after a friendly meeting with him, I announced my support in an article that was published on the morning he formally launched his campaign.
Early that same morning, however, I received a phone call from Gove. ‘Liz, you need to sit down for what I’m about to say,’ he told me. ‘I’ve decided to run.’ My initial reaction was incredulity. What on earth was he talking about? On the very morning of the campaign launch, he was asking:
‘Will you back me?’ I muttered something about needing to think about it and hung up.
I was honestly devastated. Having initially favoured Gove, I’d been entirely persuaded that he and Boris would be a winning combination – the fixer and the showman. Yet, as we all know, Boris withdrew from the contest at his planned launch event.
That afternoon, Gove called me again, still seeking my support. By this time, my shock had given way to anger. I told him bluntly I couldn’t back him.
Whatever regard I’d previously had for him, I felt the way
I felt the way he had stabbed Boris in the back was unforgivable
he’d stabbed Boris in the back was unforgivable. I simply didn’t understand how someone could do that. I then received a call from Home Secretary Theresa May, keen to sign me up to her campaign. I’d found her difficult to deal with in the past, but I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Later, when Theresa bowed out as PM, another leadership race kicked off. Among the flood of phone calls from candidates
my support was one from … Gove. There was no way, however, that I was going to support him after his betrayal of Boris last time round. I’d also since grown appalled by Gove’s manoeuvring to thwart a hard Brexit.
Both he and his close ally Dominic Cummings worried that the EU could cause us major pain. So they wanted to focus on simply rolling over existing EU trade deals, and played down the possibility of new agreements with other major trading partners. When I wanted to do a trade deal with Australia, the antigrowthers put forward ludicrous arguments about the Australians having low standards in animal welfare – and there were many leaks on this topic.
One day, I got a call from Boris, who asked me if I’d leaked something. I told him it had been Michael Gove – and what did he expect, given that Gove was a serial offender? I pressed him:
did he think Gove had been leaking? Boris replied: ‘Do bears s*** in the woods?’
Even at the last minute, in a Cabinet sub-committee, Gove tried to stop the Australia deal going ahead. But Boris had the last word. Who had been on our side over the years, he asked? Who had fought alongside us to defend freedom?
After what Australia had done for us at Gallipoli, he concluded, we should do the deal.
even my own supporters weren’t prepared to back it.
I concluded that, rather than let the conference be dominated by the issue, it would be better to lance the boil and back down.
I met Kwasi and various advisers in my room.
We agreed we needed to take the hit now on the 45p so we could move on. If we didn’t, the whole conference would descend into open warfare.
Then we announced the climbdown and Kwasi went off to rewrite his speech for tomorrow.
Backing down on the 45p eased some of the pressure, but my critics moved on to complaining about our plans to stop the welfare bill from rising so fast.
I was determined, however, to stick with that.
Our plan to restrict the growth in benefits – to match the average rise in wages rather than inflation – was both politically popular and economically beneficial.
It seemed to me wrong that somebody on welfare would get a bigger rise than someone in work. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Conservatives were opposing it.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 5
In her speech to the Tory confer
ence, Truss admits her plans will cause disruption but says there’s no alternative if Britain wants to prosper. Her speech is interrupted by Greenpeace campaigners. A new poll gives her an approval rating of minus 59 – lower than the worst recorded for Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn.
TODAY, I made my keynote speech, renewing my commitment to focus unrelentingly on economic growth and attacking the vested interests of what I called ‘the anti-growth coalition’.
Somewhat helpfully, some of that coalition decided to show up in person, as I was interrupted by environmental protesters.
This helped rally the audience behind me, with loud cheers as they were led away.
After a difficult ten days, it was satisfying to set out my stall as Prime Minister. By the end of the day, I felt cautiously optimistic that we might have weathered the worst of the storm.
Adapted from Ten Years To Save The West by Liz Truss (Biteback, £20). © Liz Truss 2024. To order a copy for £17 (offer valid to 27/04/24; UK P&P free on orders over £25), go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.