I have no crystal ball, but I’m sure we’ll prosper post-Brexit
Michael Gove says the unknown financial risks of staying in the EU are insignificant compared with the known risks of staying
‘Iwasn’t cut out for filleting and gutting, really,” says Michael Gove. The Justice Secretary is recalling a week he spent as a boy helping his father pickle fish in the family business in Aberdeen. “I am incredibly clumsy,” he says. “As someone who took seven attempts to pass their driving test, being let loose with a sharpened fish knife was never going to be a good idea.”
It is a typically self-deprecating anecdote from a minister admired by MPs of all stripes as one of the most courteous people in politics. Gutting and filleting has never been his style.
“I try to avoid criticising people,” he says, “and if I can find something generous to say about someone, I will.”
For the public who have been watching an often heated and occasionally abusive referendum campaign, his restraint is welcome.
At times, Mr Gove – the Vote Leave campaign co-chairman – has come close to making personal attacks on David Cameron and George Osborne, accusing the Prime Minister of “depressing” attempts to “scare” voters into staying in the EU.
But, after the death of the Labour MP Jo Cox shocked the country and brought the campaigning to a halt, Mr Gove clearly has no appetite for going on the attack.
“We shouldn’t attempt to question people’s motives even as we disagree with their arguments,” he says.
With four days left before the referendum, Mr Gove tells The Sunday
Telegraph he wants Mr Cameron to stay on as Prime Minister until 2020, whatever Thursday’s result.
He attempts to reassure voters who fear the impact of a Brexit on the economy, saying that voting to leave will not cause a recession. Above all, leaving the EU will be a “vote for democracy”, he says.
It is a strange time in politics. The country is on the brink of the most momentous decision for a generation about Britain’s future in Europe, but the fight has disappeared.
Politicians across the board were devastated by the killing of Mrs Cox, which prompted both the Leave and Remain campaigns to cancel their activities for three days.
“I met Jo in almost her first week in Parliament when I bumped into her in the queue in the tea room,” Mr Gove recalls. “She was an incredibly friendly and open and engaging person. To have someone who’s a mum killed in the course of just doing her job is beyond horrific. I can’t imagine what her family is going through.”
In the hours and days that followed her death, some commentators attacked Leave advocates for creating
‘The way to maintain support for migration and for refugees is to reassure people we control the numbers’
an inflammatory mood in the political debate and legitimising extremism. Mr Gove will not hit back, however.
“I won’t criticise anyone for anything they have said,” he says. “We support migration. Britain is a multicultural and diverse success story. The way to maintain that and to maintain support for migration and for refugees is to reassure people that we control numbers.”
The only way to have control over borders is to leave the EU and end the automatic right of any EU citizen to move to the UK, according to the Leave campaign. Restoring this kind of control and democratic accountability is Mr Gove’s overriding motivation.
He says Brussels is unaccountable, the commissioners are unelected and the European Court of Justice is a “rogue” court that subscribes to “an ideological agenda” and has undermined democracy, he says.
Does the Lord Chancellor believe he is winning the day? “Many of the arguments we have made have resonated. I don’t know because I think the result is on a knife edge. I genuinely think that the public are making up their mind at the moment. It could go either way.”
One major obstacle is the calibre of Mr Gove’s opponents – chiefly, Mr Cameron and the Chancellor, Mr Osborne, he says. This is quite a comment, given that Mr Gove’s relations with the PM have, by some accounts, become so strained that even their wives reportedly rowed at a party.
Mr Gove declines to make “protestations of friendship” with his opponents. Is the Prime Minister angry with him for fighting so hard for Brexit?
“I don’t know. He has been nothing but genial and generous whenever we have talked, but I can’t speculate about other people’s views.”
Mr Gove rejects the position of Conservative rebels who say Mr Cameron is “finished” after Thursday’s vote. He does not deny reports that he has signed a letter saying that Mr Cameron must remain in charge whatever the outcome.
“I absolutely think that David Cameron should stay, whatever the result of the referendum, and I hope that he will stay for the full second term, which he was elected to serve.”
Mr Osborne should also be allowed to keep his job, he says, in a covert warning to the plotters to back off.
“I don’t want to have anyone as prime minister other than David Cameron and if people spend their time thinking about some of this stuff then they are getting in the way of two things: one a fair, open, fact-based referendum debate; and two, the Conservative government continuing afterwards in a stable and secure fashion.”
When it comes to the facts of the debate, Mr Gove dismisses the warnings of economic doom from the Remain campaign. Asked if he worries that his arguments for Brexit could throw Britain into a recession, he says there are risks, come what may.
“There are economic risks if we leave, economic risks if we remain. I don’t think there will be a recession as a result of a vote to leave.
“But at some point in the future, it may be the case that global economic factors cause problems,” he says. “My argument is that whatever happens in the future, an independent Britain will be better able to cope with those strains.
“I can’t foretell the future, but I don’t believe that the act of leaving the European Union would make our economic position worse, I think it would make it better.”
When he was at school in the early 1980s, Mr Gove’s father’s Aberdeen fish business had to close down, partly as a result of the European common fishing policies.
“I used to go down to my dad’s fish house and watch when he was pickling and smoking the fish. I can remember the joshing with my Dad and the team there. I remember with sadness the business closing,” he says.
Now, his parents, who adopted him as a baby, are backing his decision to campaign to leave the EU.
“They support what I am doing in this campaign, and I am very touched by that,” he says.
After a gruelling battle that began in earnest four months ago, Mr Gove will settle down with a glass of red wine when the polls close and try to get an early night before the result is announced. How is he feeling about the end of the campaign?
“I am hopeful that our arguments will win,” he says. “The inference of the Remain campaign is that we can’t stand on our own two feet. I disagree. That’s at the essence of democracy. That’s the most precious thing to me.”
The Prime Minister himself told all MPs earlier this year, “follow your heart”. There is little doubt Mr Gove is doing just that. “There are great things Britain can do in the future as a progressive beacon. By voting Leave, we have that opportunity,” he says.
“People should vote for democracy and Britain should vote for hope.”