Of all the Tory departures in this period, Michael Gove deserves special mention. He holds a very particular place in the story of the last 14 years.
He was not, by any measure, the most venal or inadequate of the Conservative ministers who have governed us in this period. He was, in many ways, the most impressive - adept at mastering a brief, operating with a degree of cognitive ability far above his colleagues and often reaching decent positions on the options in front of him. But he was also something else entirely. He worked to undermine any notion of a better Conservative character. He encouraged and defended the party's deterioration into populism and constitutional barbarism. He was, in many ways, the exemplar of the period: Edmund Burke on the outside, Lenin on the inside.
I first saw him speak when he became justice secretary in 2015. We'd just had years of Chris Grayling, operating with ape-like vigour in the Ministry of Justice - banning books, privatising probation, attacking legal aid. A rank authoritarian, with no grasp at all of what he was doing or the consequences of his actions.
Gove's arrival was a breath of fresh air. For months, he spent time talking to experts. There seems to be a certain irony there, considering what he did next, but it is not irony - it is an internal inconsistency that goes to the heart of his personality. I spoke to several penal reformers and service providers at the time. Fine people, with deep knowledge of the area and ideas for how to fix it. They'd all had meetings with Gove. And then, after listening to a wide array of specialist figures, the new justice secretary adopted a quite liberal, if slightly paternalist, position on the policy brief and executed it. He was impressive.
He did this again and again. As environment secretary, he introduced a ban on microbeads, on fuel combustion vehicles, on bee-harming pesticides. As chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, he pinpointed the problem with civil service generalism and churn. As levelling-up secretary, he pursued a leasehold reform bill which would have made significant changes if it had not been scuppered by reactionary elements within his party. He stands almost alone in the top level of the Conservative party for his comprehension and good sense.
He very rarely seemed to become embroiled in culture war nonsense about immigrants or racist breakfast, or any of the other mental dross that permeates our national life. In person he is resolutely courteous and polite. There's even something commendable in his eccentric personal life, a quite charming failure to conceal his vulnerability. It's a reminder that politicians can be people, rather than automatons reading out a script from No.10.
And then there is the other Michael Gove. This is the version of the man who we do not see clearly, but instead in flashes, sudden brief moments of truthfulness, little revelatory asides that give a glimpse of something vicious underneath. As education secretary during the coalition government, Gove brought in Dominic Cummings to work with him and protected him over the years that followed. That was extremely revealing. It showed that the politeness was at least partly a superficial veneer, a device to assist his career. Behind the scenes he enlisted thugs, to lash out viciously at those who would scrutinise them. And it suggested that there was more to Gove than judicious policy assessment. There was a Tory revolutionary in there, who rather admired Cummings' infantile outbursts and impotent rage, who also wanted to undermine the constitutional structures around him. They both despised the education “establishment” - civil servants, local authorities and teachers’ unions. They called it 'the blob', a word which has now become a hazy repository of conspiratorial thinking in the Conservative parliamentary party.
On 3rd June 2016, he appeared on Sky News for an interview during the Brexit debate and heard how the Bank of England, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the IMF, the Confederation of British Industry and others were warning about the impact of leaving the European Union. We all know what came next. We remember the line well. "People… have had enough of experts". But in fact it was the rest of what he said that was most chilling. "I'm asking the British public to take back control of our destiny from those organisations which are distant, unaccountable, elitist and don't have their own interests at heart."
It wasn't just an attack on expertise. It was much worse than that. It was an attempt to portray independent bodies of experts as part of some plot against the people. As ever, he was unfailingly polite. He did not put it strongly, but lightly. The words were modest, but the message was not. It was pure populism. It was Viktor Orban, Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump.
Gove secured the first UK interview with Trump after the election, in his moonlighting role as a journalist. He did not challenge him. He did not hold him to account. He simply allowed him to speak, at length. Afterwards, in a grotesque parody of a journalist's role, he posed alongside him, enthusiastic and slightly awe-struck, sticking his thumb up. In terms of reporting, Gove's visit obviously accomplished nothing. But politically it was deeply significant. His participation in the Vote Leave campaign had guaranteed mainstream centre-right credibility to a populist programme. Now he did the same for Trump. He took the violent horror of Trump's rhetoric and lent it a respectable Conservative sheen. He made palatable what would otherwise have been obscene.
This became his standard operating procedure. As the Conservative party reached ever greater moral depths, he would spring up in the aftermath to present it in more tolerable language.
I've always had this problem with Gove's quotes. You watch an interview and experience a sense of righteous indignation over what he is doing. But once you write it down in black and white it doesn't seem so bad. And that is not a bug. It is a feature. It is evidence of a far more malign and dangerous form of politics than his more knuckle-dragging political compatriots are capable of.
In 2022, Boris Johnson baselessly claimed that Keir Starmer failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile when he was director of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). It was a grim slur, which weaponised the suffering of victims for political ends. Other Brexiters had the moral sense to distance themselves from it. "You are a better man than many of your detractors will ever understand," Downing Street's head of policy Munira Mirza said as she subsequently resigned in protest, "which is why it is so desperately sad that you let yourself down by making a scurrilous accusation against the leader of the opposition."
That is not what Gove did. Instead, we were treated to that same old process of his: politeness, reasonable tones, and corrosive moral decline. "I think this is a uniquely sensitive issue and it does need to be handled with care, and I listen with enormous respect to those who act for victims of the actions of a terrible, terrible criminal," he told Sky. "But – and it’s not a subject that I want to dwell on because it is uniquely sensitive – it is the case that the CPS apologised for the handling of this case and what happened in 2009, and I think we should acknowledge that an apology was given at the time and respect that."
And there it was again. The lines look perfectly innocuous on paper. They have done up their top button and ironed their shirt. But in context, their intention is clear: to make the indecent respectable.
There'll be generous write-ups of Gove in the right-wing press today I imagine, and some scathing left-wing assessments online. Neither approach quite gets a handle on him.
He truly was an impressive member of Cabinet, with decent principles and a commendable manner. And he truly was a man who would justify anything, who had no moral floor. He acted consistently to destroy that which was calm and responsible about British conservatism and turn it into the Frankenstein's Monster we see today. He is the living embodiment of how a Burkean philosophy can disintegrate from the inside, leaving only a surface veneer of respectability to conceal a snarling inner temperament. All smiles and handshakes, followed by the flashing of knives.
A brilliant analysis of a most malign character 👏🏼
This is a brilliant piece, one of your very best, and absolutely nails Gove.
For me, the best encapsulation of his malign influence on public life is this interview during the 2019 election campaign. He is asked about the 40 hospitals pledge and replies, in the courteous terms you mention, by reinterpreting completely valid journalism as biased political campaigning. Trumpian post-truth cynicism with a Latinate vocabulary.
https://x.com/C4Ciaran/status/1197500442504286208