Congratulations to Michael Gove, who has joined the world of weekly current affairs publications by replacing Fraser Nelson as editor of the Spectator – where he has already endeared himself to its increasingly crackpot regular writers by announcing he would vote for Kamala Harris as president were he American.
To mark his appointment, we’ve sprinkled a few of our favourite stories about the slippery charmer throughout this week’s column. Enjoy!
Christopher Chope, a Conservative MP who is a leading supporter of Robert Jenrick’s campaign for the party leadership, was understandably widely criticised last week for his claim rival Kemi Badenoch was “preoccupied with her children”.
But he remains on the Commons’ Modernisation Committee, set up this parliamentary term to “consider reforms to House of Commons procedures, standards, and working practices” (Chope made his comments on the very day the committee put out a call for public views on what topics it should prioritise for action).
To be fair to the Conservatives, who selected Chope as their candidate for their committee, they couldn’t have known the septuagenarian holds some slightly antediluvian views. Apart from the time in 2018 when he objected to a bill which sought to outlaw upskirting, the act of taking a picture under a person’s clothing without their permission.
And the time the same year when he objected to plans to host a global women’s conference in the Commons. And in 2013 when he opposed granting a posthumous pardon to Alan Turing over his conviction for “homosexual activity”. And again the same year when he faced criticism for referring to parliamentary staff as “servants”. Just the man to drag the Palace of Westminster into the 21st century!
Conservative novelist Anthony Horowitz can probably wave goodbye to commissions at the Speccie now Michael Gove is in the editor’s chair. In 2014 he penned an article for the magazine entitled “I always defended Michael Gove. Then I met him.”
“We have one chance to get this right,” was the subject of an email from Team Renewal 2030 – the official title of Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative leadership campaign – calling on Tory members to back their candidate.
The open letter was signed by seven MPs, MSPs and peers explaining why “there is only one person who is up to the task facing us, and that is Kemi Badenoch”.
One of the signatories might want to get something right, though. “Rt Hon David TC Davies MP” lost his seat in July’s general election and is now working in the office of Welsh Parliament member Laura Anne Jones.
The Spectator has long been the in-house journal of the Conservative Party, but whoever wins its leadership contest is already not well-disposed to its new editor.
Team Jenrick were unimpressed with Michael Gove’s comments to the Today podcast that Bobby J “looks like a typical Tory politician”, with one briefing: “Michael Gove and his acolytes have been responsible for so much of the infighting and drama that has led our party to where it is. Rob’s going to end that drama and the excuses that followed and just deliver for our country.”
Kemi Badenoch, meanwhile, was a long-time mentee of Gove, but their friendship came to an end when the latter was reported to have had an affair with one of Badenoch’s friends which caused the pal’s marriage to end. The then business secretary said in February that her friendship with Gove is “not what it used to be but he’s somebody that I have to work with”.
The Spectator Christmas party should be fun!
The Times gave an inadvertent insight into the state of the Conservative leadership race with a readers’ poll on its daily politics newsletter.
Subscribers were asked ‘who would make a better Tory leader?’ with the two available options being, er, ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.
In 2021 Michael Gove attempted to avoid paying the £5 entrance fee for Aberdeen’s Bohemia nightclub by arguing that he was chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster – a move akin to trying to blag one’s way into an Oscars after-party by claiming you know the actor who plays Tony in Hollyoaks and, in this case, just as successful.
(Incidentally, the song he was filmed raving to once inside was Mr. De’s Big Booty Hoes And Sluts Too.)
After vowing that, were he to lose his seat in July’s general election he would devote himself to “skydiving, motorcycling, fast catamaran sailing”, self-styled Brexit hardman Steve Baker is back.
The former minister has, alongside Paul Dolan – an academic with a penchant for dressing as a member of a 1990s techno outfit – launched ‘The Provocation People’, a body which “can help you transform your decision-making by systematically dismantling groupthink”. Baker and Dolan are listed on the site as its “Chief Provocation Officers”.
“Consider the monumental shifts brought by outliers like Galileo and Einstein,” says the website. “They remind us that human knowledge does not advance linearly, and sometimes a paradigm changes dramatically.”
Galileo, Einstein, Baker – the big three!
(PS The site boasts that Baker is a fellow of the RSA – a fellowship anyone can attain for a one-off set-up fee of £75 and an annual subscription of £208.)
In her tell-air memoir about her time as an Conservative MP wife’s, Sasha Swire records that her husband, Hugo, referred to Michael Gove’s, er, honourable member as “like a slinky that comes down the stairs before the rest of the body”.
Has anyone checked in on GB News presenter Nick Dixon? Because he appears to be having a very public breakdown on social media hellsite Twitter/X.
Monitoring the Tory leadership race, he mused: “Jenrick is centre-left, Kemi is far-left. I will block anyone who disagrees. Unless it’s to argue Jenrick is also far-left (I am open-minded).”
Then, adding his to the debate over the FA’s appointment of German Thomas Tuchel as manager of the England men’s national team, he said: “Football is now such a tool of the elite I wonder if this is intended to help ‘reset’ EU relations, and stop naughty fans singing those WW2 songs that bother the LBC pale ale wanker class so much.”
Finally, having opined on the front and back pages, he turned his acerbic eye to, er, supermarket self-service machines, complaining: “Basically you have to track down an overweight resentful woman who hands you a bag like she’s giving you her last functioning kidney.” Then his pièce de résistance: “Deport almost everyone. Close border. Stop women voting. Very simple.”
Nurse! The smelling salts!
Recently we reported how, in her days courting Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott complained he never took her out on any proper dates – so the future Labour leader whisked her off to Highgate Cemetery to see Karl Marx’s grave.
Not the worst date suggestion of all time, though. Two years ago, after his break-up from Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine, a woman matched with Michael Gove on the dating app Bumble, where he suggested a first date.
To a Simon Heffer book launch.
Ukip, who, unaccountably, still exist, held their annual conference last week to one man and a dog in Nottingham.
And what a speech by leader Nick Tenconi (the party’s ninth permanent leader in eight years), who began by attacking Reform as “metropolitan liberals playing at patriots” and only got better from there.
The 40-year-old declared that “our enemy is the deep state who seeks to turn us all into corporate drones eating bugs and living in pods”, claimed “the globalists have artificially manufactured our low birthrates to justify their agenda”, fretted immigrants “choose to wear foreign clothing” and thundered “we don’t need a million migrants a year to make curry – we literally have the recipes”.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the new right rises and, with God as my witness, we will take our country back and, when we do, it will be for His glory,” he ended, following a detour into how Ukip was somehow going to remove “filth” from films. What a rum old word in which Nigel Farage and his merry band are the (relatively) sane ones!
In 2019 Michael Gove was photographed wearing wellington boots – actual wellington boots – to the beach.
Reform deputy leader Richard Tice, meanwhile, is running a competition in his constituency to draw his official Christmas card for this year.
“You can use anything you want – crayons, felt tips, paint,” says the poster advertising the competition – the crayons included, presumably, to allow Lee Anderson to enter.
