The referendum was always going to leave this country divided

As his party splits on Brexit, Michael Gove is keeping his powder dry. He tells Charlotte Edwardes and Joe Murphy

HALFWAY through my interview with Michael Gove, the Environment S e c r e t a r y, h i s junior minister George Eustice resigns. We have just walked past his office a few doors from Gove’s own, here in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Gove doesn’t know for a good half hour, and nor do we. But his special advisers are getting agitated. Their phones buzz. Several attempts are made to cut in. Finally Gove is drawn into an anteroom. On return he l o o k s s h a ke n . “I’m disappointed,” he admits. “But I know that George has felt strongly about things for a while.” Did he know Eustice might resign? Long pause. “It’s probably better that I don’t say any more.”

It’s a mark of the state of Westminster that t re mo rs l i ke this are a daily occurrence. But until this moment, Gove had been a picture of political polish, betraying little of the crisis within. He joked, as we arrived, that he’d been advised always to wear a pressed white shirt for photographs. His tie is on-message green, his office carpet hoovered, there’s a faint whiff of Mr Sheen. And in chat too, he’s poised. His voice is a warm Aberdonian purr with which he performs feats of elaborate politeness (such as an apology for accidentally calling Melania “Mrs Trump” instead of “the First Lady”).

Gove, of course, is well aware of the trapdoor nature of politics. Tipped as a potential party leader more than once, his frontline career has been, well, theatrical. To recap: his controversial term as Education Secretary ended in 2014 when he was shunted, some say unhappily, to the job of Chief Whip. He bounced back, as Justice Secretary, in 2015 and arguably turned the revolver on Cameron by siding with Boris Johnson and Leave in a referendum he’d been dead against Cameron holding (“I didn’t think we would win”). The drama continued after Leave won prompting Cameron to resign as Prime Minister. Gove knifed Johnson to launch a rival leadership bid, only to be fired again, this time by Theresa May.

Any regrets? Perhaps the bus that promised £350 million to the NHS? “Absolutely not,” he says. “We’re now spending more than £350 million extra a week on the NHS — i t ’s future is critical to ours”.

What about the lies told about the queues of Turkish immigrants at our borders? Would Leave claim that in another referendum? “It would be a very different campaign,” he says. “My hope is that we will never go there.” Later he adds, “Given that there might be [another referendum], I won’t say now the things that I would have done d i f fe re n t ly last time round because that might show my hand. I’ll keep schtum on the mistakes that we may have made.”

But he will say why he thought it was a bad idea. “There were two reasons: I thought that it wasn’t clear what the question would be [on the ballot paper] and the capacity for it to generate further

I won’t say now the things

I’d have done differently with the referendum because that might show my hand

division rather than put the issue to bed was greater. And I also felt that, funnily enough, there were some people in the country and the party who he would never be able to satisfy.”

He describes his co-campaigner Dominic Cummings as an “idealist” and “highly principled”, perhaps as an answer to accusations that there were irregularities in their campaigning.

The referendum, he says, “was a very difficult period because of the strain on friendships on one side”. By this he means David and Samantha Cameron, old friends and holiday companions. Indeed, during the fallout Gove’s wife, the journalist Sarah Vine, godmother to Cameron’s youngest child, told friends that the Camerons had treated them “like staff”. Gove glosses over this, saying his wife was naturally upset because “if you love someone and that person appears to be on the receiving end of criticism… you will feel angry or annoyed”.

As he talks, his hands are a series of awkward gestures and his feet are twisted into ballet’s first position. He concedes he’s naturally clumsy — “I’m the world’s worst tennis player; I took seven attempts to pass my driving test” — although “not quite Mr Bean levels”.

But that’s in stark contrast to his control over what he says. Despite encouraging us to “ask anything”, he’s painfully careful, let down only by his own furious blushes. When we ask if it’s true that he’s a gifted mimic who does a b r i l l i a n t i mp r e s s i o n o f R u p e r t Murdoch and Jerry Hall, he says, florid to his roots, that his skill has been “exaggerated”. Can he do Theresa May? “No, no, no. It’s a very limited repertoire.” The only person he’ll admit to imitating is Gordon Brown, “but this was professional”, he hastens. “When we were practising for Prime Minister’s Questions.”

Few politicians are less like their public persona. He was abhorred in the Education Department, a view not helped by his treacherous leadership challenge. But old friends are adoring (wh i l e a d mi t t i n g h e is “very complicated”). He is charming and funny, they say, “with a keen sense of the absurd”. Adds another: “Of all the characters in Oz, he is the one with the heart.”

Which makes it all the more frustrating to interview him in politician mode. I ask about views he’s aired in private, such as that