At last! Michael Gove has finally decided that he wants to be leader of the Conservative Party – and therefore Prime Minister by September.
He’s the right man for the job. Indeed, in a field of eccentric and mediocre candidates, he’s the only one who inspires excitement as well as confidence.
The Justice Secretary possesses a unique combination of talents – unique that is, among today’s miserably myopic Conservatives.
Michael Gove: "there were a number of people who had said to me: 'Michael, it should be you'" #ToryLeadership pic.twitter.com/r9wHT2VIgy
— Adam Smith (@adamtimsmith) June 30, 2016
He’s a deep thinker who devours history and political philosophy; Boris is a skim-reading show-off by comparison. Gove’s vision of Britain – optimistic, radical, unmistakably Tory – is drawn from this extraordinary hinterland.
At the same time, he’s an ass-kicker. Just ask the National Union of Teachers. Or, better still, his own civil servants.
They hated the notion of Free Schools. Gove outwitted them at every turn, using his own political appointees – secret agents, almost – to study their modus operandi and beat them at their own game.
This combination of idealism and polite ruthlessness hasn’t been seen in the Tory party since Margaret Thatcher was at the height of her powers.
Michael Gove declaration: incredible stuff… pic.twitter.com/3IHjhrrsw6
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) June 30, 2016
Mrs T wasn’t an intellectual, it’s true, but her patriotic optimism was far more nuanced than she’s given credit for. And she got things done.
Theresa May likes to portray herself as their heir to Margaret. What a nerve!
The Home Secretary is an attention-seeking, ideologically promiscuous opportunist whose only real passion is self-advancement. She’s Boris without the charm.
Michael Gove is her polar opposite. For years, his friends have been tearing their hair out at his lack of ambition to be Prime Minister.
That’s not to say he isn’t ambitious. But he is modest – far too modest – about his own abilities.
A little example from my own experience. Many years ago, we shared a desk at the Daily Telegraph. We chatted about all sorts of things – but not his time at Oxford.
I am transferring my support to Michael Gove for the leadership of the @Conservatives and Prime @Number10gov. pic.twitter.com/C8yUvy9mhg
— Michael Fabricant (@Mike_Fabricant) June 30, 2016
Then someone told me he’d been President of the Oxford Union, an achievement on which Boris was busy building his career. “Is this true, Michael?” I asked him. He blushed and said he didn’t think it was relevant.
Even today, he doesn’t like brown-nosing. Friends tell him that he’d make a wonderful Prime Minister and he changes the subject.
But he’s never reluctant to sound off about one of his great obsessions: the awfulness of “the Blob” – his name for the network of greedy, smug liberals who talk themselves up and Britain down.
Gove can hold his own at any Islingtonian dinner party: he’s read the same novelists as his bien pensant enemies, seen the same plays, and when he occasionally stood in as a guest on BBC2’s Late Review, his critical insights were just as fluent as those of Bonnie Greer and other liberal windbags.
Bodyblow for Boris. Michael Gove stands for Tory leadership
— norman smith (@BBCNormanS) June 30, 2016
But at heart he’s a culture warrior. And that’s precisely what Britain needs right now, because the culture he’s fighting is draining the entrepreneurial spirit out of this country.
The liberal Left hate him more than any other politician. They suspect that, without him, the Leave campaign wouldn’t have humiliated them a week ago.
They’re right. Michael Gove persuaded undecided voters who were unnerved by Ukip’s rhetoric that voting to leave the EU was not just a declaration of independence but also crucial to our long-term economic survival.
Gove can make Brexit work – and, in the process, create a society whose search for open markets is motivated by his own generosity of spirit. The Tories would be crazy not to elect him.
