The descent of Gove
How Brexit ate its parent
Journalists tend to be kind to Michael Gove, not least because he tended to be kind to them. He was politically adventurous (tick), indiscreet (tick) and almost invariably courteous (double tick). Also, unlike many politicians, he didn’t have courtier-journalists who he privileged with access in return for bigging him up in the press. Perhaps he didn’t need them; he was famously Rupert Murdoch’s semi-permanent candidate for the next Tory leadership whenever a contest was happening, and indeed when it wasn’t. I will disappoint some readers when I say that I think this was because Murdoch genuinely admired Gove and not because Gove was somehow his creature.
So in the wake of Gove’s announcement that he will not be participating in the forthcoming election but will be retiring (and this one looks like adios and not hasta la vista), many in my business have written not unfriendly obituaries. Mostly what they say is that – whatever you think of Gove politically – you have to acknowledge that he was a “big hitter”, a reformer, a highly consequential politician.
But this is a piece to say that though this should have been true, in the end it wasn’t. Given that he was in office (and in Cabinet) for almost 14 years, his achievements are actually sparse. And that the reason he didn’t in the end amount to so much more was because of the one great historical disaster for which he bears a degree of responsibility.