He made enemies because he made so much progress. On education and Brexit, he was right. History may be less kind in other areas
While it’s by no means clear who Liz Truss would have in her Cabinet, her aides have been making it clear who’s for the chop. “Gove’s done,” one of them was quoted as saying, to no one’s great surprise given the bad blood between the two. He has taken the hint, endorsed Rishi Sunak and declared his frontbench career over. After 11 years, he never held a great office of state – but achieved more than most of those who did.
Aged 54, he has plenty still to give – but don’t expect Truss’s allies to beg her to keep him. To a great many of his former supporters, Gove is a changed man: someone who started his career as a liberal education reformer but who somehow ended up drifting to illiberal conservatism and becoming a main architect of lockdown. Ms Truss, his erstwhile deputy on schools reform, came to regard him as part of what she so only-half-jokingly called the ‘axis of evil’ – Little England protectionists standing athwart free trade.
I first knew Gove when he was my boss, as news editor of The Times and even then he was seen as a celebrity heading for greatness. He was a Tory moderniser, a biographer of Michael Portillo and a rising star close to David Cameron. As Education Secretary his Academies Act was revolutionary, creating free schools and allowing thousands of other schools to escape local authority control. Like many Tories before him, he took on ‘the blob’ of the education establishment. Unlike them, he won.
Here was a case study in how a man of words – a first-class columnist – could become a man of action. He was advised by Dominic Cummings, who he called his ‘daemon’: a Philip Pullman-style alter ego doing the dirty work. He was liked, even loved by those who worked with him. He’d give civil servants books he thought they might enjoy, surprising them by his insights into their character. “He can praise you in words that capture the very best version of yourself,” said one colleague.
But those he outwitted on school reform hated him for it – and vilified him so much that he was seen as an electoral liability for the 2015 election. Perhaps this scarred him too deeply. When he moved to the environment brief, he ended up befriending the lobby groups who had expected him to declare war. His backing of Brexit was decisive, lending intellectual heft and his superb oratory skills to a project badly in need of a decent salesmanship. Boris Johnson added flair and a sense of insurgency, but only after Gove galvanised the campaign.
During that campaign, there were signs of Gove’s new illiberal bent. As education secretary he had believed in people power: giving teachers the ability to set the curriculum, parents the power to choose. But on post-Brexit trade? He saw danger. In private meetings, he’d talk about not sacrificing the NHS on the altar of American neoliberalism and about the need to save British consumers from the peril of chlorine-washed chicken.
His Brexit triumph was followed by one of the most spectacular acts of betrayal in politics. For a campaign manager to knife the candidate on the day of the launch and then run himself is without parallel in antiquity, let alone living memory. One might argue that Gove saw, then, the organisational flaws in Johnson that stand exposed now. In which case, it was a massive misjudgement to become his campaign manager. When Theresa May prevailed she, like Truss, had scores to settle with Gove. So off he went to political Siberia.
Johnson then forgave him, saying his undoubted skills needed to be put to use. But in lockdown, Gove recreated his old axis with Cummings (then in No10) and both argued for draconian policies, trying to outmanoeuvre the more cautious Johnson. Gove oversaw a system where alarmist SAGE reports were never sense-checked and a cost-benefit analysis of economic or educational damage were never commissioned. Johnson suspected him of being the “chatty rat” who leaked a lockdown decision in apparent attempt to make sure No10 could not wriggle out of it.
Gove’s final job was to try to give shape and definition to “levelling up” and succeeded in a way the Prime Minister never did. His falling behind Kemi Badenoch’s leadership campaign was significant: he had been her boss, but prepared to step aside and become her svengali. Had she gone through to Tory members, she’d probably have won – and Gove would be, in effect, running day-to-day government. But under Truss, he had no chance: she regards him as effective, but malign. Someone who had to be kept a very safe distance from government.
When Tracey Ullman satirised Gove for her BBC comedy sketches, she cast him as a babysitter telling parents “I am confident in my abilities to look after this human infant and you have my categorical assurance that I won’t sell it… or eat it.” Unnerved, they fire him. It was a joke on a conclusion that David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Truss all drew about Gove: that he’s clever, articulate but – ultimately – not to be trusted. His admirers (and I am still firmly in that camp) see someone who made so many enemies because he made so much progress. In education, his incredible skills were used well. In lockdown: not so much.
A free school recently opened in my neighbourhood and when I walk past it, I think of how it’s a monument to the difference one man can make in politics. Without Gove, there would be no free schools and hardly any Academies. Without him, thousands of working class pupils who went to university probably would never have made it. Without him, Brexit would probably not have happened. His record will be debated for years to come – but few can doubt that he leaves frontline politics as one most consequential ministers of modern times.
We rely on advertising to help fund our award-winning journalism.
We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future.
Thank you for your support.
Need help?
Visit our adblocking instructions page.
