So whose bright idea was it for Boris Johnson to compare Ukraine’s valiant struggle for survival with Britain voting to leave the European Union? Mandrake is reliably informed that those much-reviled lines in the prime minister’s spring conference speech were urged upon him by none other than Michael Gove.
“Johnson was seeking advice about how to work a reference to Ukraine into his speech and that was when Gove piped up with the Brexit analogy,” whispers my well-placed informant.
“This isn’t the first time one of Gove’s bright ideas has turned out badly for Johnson – it was him who was ultimately behind Johnson’s ill-advised trip to Scotland a couple of years ago that precipitated a national booing competition.”
I reported at the time how Gove’s close ally Luke Graham – Johnson’s special adviser on the Union – had also been agitating for the PM to make that disastrous trip to Scotland. Graham ended up carrying the can, but, as an avid supporter of Gove in the 2019 Tory leadership contest, he would do nothing without first consulting him as his then departmental head in the Cabinet Office.
Once bitten, Johnson should have been twice shy when it came to taking Gove’s “helpful” suggestions. It was reported that Gove’s first big idea about how to respond to Vladimir Putin’s aggression was to pointlessly have No 10 lit up in the colours of the Ukrainian flag.
The prime minister would do well never to forget how Gove sold him down the river during his first disastrous run for the Conservative leadership in 2016.
Michael Gove concocted Boris Johnson’s bizarre Brexit analogy
The prime minister would do well to remember how Gove sold him down the river in 2016
