Europe and the Tory party for ever
more broadly, to a “bitterly divided, anxious, leaderless country”, as author Kazuo Ishiguro described it on Friday, it was balm indeed. Never has dullness been such an asset.
But a surprise assassin had already done her work for her. Gove has known Johnson for 30 years and knows his shortcomings as well as anyone. For as long as Johnson was a net positive for the party, he could be indulged. As David Cameron said privately after reluctantly agreeing to allow Johnson to stand for the London mayoralty, in politics “you take what you can get”.
Gove’s doubts were ventilated a little too publicly two years ago when, seemingly after drink had been taken, he told a Rupert Murdoch dinner party: “Boris is incapable of focusing on serious issues and has no gravitas. He isn’t a team player and plays to the gallery the whole time.” He also said he was incapable of taking serious decisions. Gove, it seems, was happy to go along with Boris the votewinner, but after his side won the referendum, the game changed. Johnson had served his purpose.
Gove could have stayed quiet and played a comparable role to the one he played under David Cameron. Equally, many senior Tories have long been doubtful of Johnson’s grasp as to what is needed in high office, and it seems Gove concluded that buckling down under Johnson would have been a false economy, as it were. The question remains: when did Gove decide he needed to go it alone? (He was reportedly astonished by the subsequent turn of events.) Charles Moore suggested yesterday that Gove cannot have planned it or he would have abandoned Boris long ago, but that would have been to split the Leave camp and jeopardise victory. Principles are all very well …
It does seem fair, though, to infer that Gove was looking for shortcomings in Johnson’s approach to leadership, and the straw that broke the camel’s back was a series of developments the day before Johnson was due to launch his leadership campaign. Johnson cancelled a meeting of possible backer MPs just 15 minutes before it was due to start, not just the sort of affront that the ultracourteous Gove would have hated but nobody’s idea of clever politics.
Tensions had been mounting between the pair as Gove sought promises from Johnson that George Osborne, the Chancellor, and controversial aide Dominic Cummings would be part of the team. Johnson dragged his feet, though he did want energy minister Andrea Leadsom on board. She was keen, but wanted a promise in writing that he would give her a top job, possibly in charge of EU negotiations. Johnson agreed, but then left the letter in his office, allowing Leadsom’s deadline to pass.
Further, in the course of a socially demanding evening, he failed to put out a celebratory tweet confirming her recruitment. Furiously, assuming the deal to be off, she lodged her own leadership nomination papers. That same evening, Gove discovered that, with the next day’s deadline looming, Johnson had barely begun writing the speech to launch his bid. It was, in short, a shambles. By remarkable coincidence, or perhaps not, a leaked email emerged, sent by Sarah Vine, Gove’s wife, in which she warned her husband of Johnson’s unreliability and reminding her husband of his own appeal to powerful media figures. The result was that Michael Gove told colleagues late on Wednesday night that he could no longer support Johnson, and that, against all previous intimations, he would stand for the leadership himself. The effect on Thursday was devastating. Wavering MPs abandoned the Johnson campaign, pledging their support for Gove. At 11.30am Johnson made a characteristically ebullient, Shakespeare-fuelled speech, leaving the big “reveal”, that he was pulling out, until the last moment.
Historians will argue as to when Gove decided that, contrary to countless denials, he might run for the Tory leadership, and Johnson supporters will cite his elaborate denials of interest in the job as protesting too much. Recently David Cameron was reported as saying that Gove was a Maoist who had gone a bit “barmy”. Maybe only Sarah Vine knows the answer.
One person’s treachery is another’s heroism, and many Tories, though shocked at the personal will see Gove’s decision as providing a merciful release. Others say Johnson owed the party more. Lord Heseltine said Johnson, having created the greatest constitutional crisis of modern times, was “like a general that led his army to the sound of guns, and at the sight of the battlefield abandoned the field”. Lord Levene said Johnson had “done more damage to the economy than anyone could possibly have imagined”. If Gove feels, rightly or wrongly, that he has performed a public service in his brutal ditching of Johnson, he is evidently not alone.
Gove, like May (to whom he is not close), does not see politics as a game, more as an opportunity to get things done. His zeal is easily underestimated, not least by Johnson, it seems. Gove, says his friend Toby Young, will have been hugely upset by having to put conviction ahead of friendship, particularly in the case of Cameron. None the less, that discomfort must have been faintly mitigated by knowing that David Cameron was appalled by the idea of Johnson becoming PM. Whether he spoke to Cameron – or maybe he didn’t need to, having presumably spoken to Osborne – before plunging in the knife will be another one for the historians.
By Friday, the day Gove delivered his 5,000-word appeal for support, Andrea Leadsom had emerged as the dark horse. In 10 days’ time, there will be just two candidates left, from whom Tory members will make their choice. One insider now believes it will be a contest between “Mrs Leaden and Mrs Leadsom”, with Mrs May’s experience (if not her record in tackling the migration figures) keeping her as favourite to supplant the petty men.
Maybe Johnson knew that sorting out the UK’s relationship with the EU required an application and attention to detail that was beyond him, or certainly was something he would not relish, and that the crown could wait. Last weekend he reportedly approached May, saying he would pull out of the race if she would promise to stand down before the 2020 election. She said no. Who knows when Gove got wind of the suggestion? It will have done yet more to confirm that Johnson’s heart was not in it.
Yet his heart has always been in becoming PM. Can this really be the end of that particular story?