Michael Gove has read the riot act to Theresa May, made peace with Boris Johnson and polished his image. If there’s a vacancy at 10 Downing Street, the hardline Brexiter is well placed to pounce.
Gove was reviled among Tories when he stabbed Johnson in the back after last year’s referendum. Instead of supporting the foreign secretary’s bid to become prime minister, he ran himself – and failed miserably.
But Gove, who was Vote Leave’s campaign chair, is now the comeback kid. He and Johnson jointly wrote a letter to May last month, warning her not to deviate from their hard Brexit line, according to the Mail on Sunday.
After a terrible two weeks, in which the Cabinet has started to fall apart, May’s position is again precarious. There are now 40 Tory MPs who want her to quit, according to the Sunday Times.
If the prime minister is either kicked out or quits, the Tories will need to pick a new leader. The party’s MPs will first whittle the field of candidates down to two; the members will then choose who becomes leader and, hence, prime minister.
The first stage of the process is likely to result in a battle between a hard Brexiter and a soft one. Gove is looking more and more like the standard bearer of the hardliners. Johnson’s star has faded, not least because his incautious comments may lead to a British woman being locked up for an extra five years in an Iranian jail.
David Davis no longer looks such a strong contender either, because he is not on top of his brief of negotiating Brexit. Dominic Cummings, Gove’s former aide, has branded the Brexit secretary as “thick as mince” and “lazy as a toad” – a barb that has stuck. Meanwhile, Priti Patel has been forced to quit the Cabinet because of her freelance foreign policy and nobody takes Liam Fox seriously.
If Gove emerged as the hard Brexiter candidate, he would be favourite to win the contest against any soft Brexiter, because Tory party members are enthusiastic to burn our bridges with the EU.
What sort of Brexit would we then get? Gove is trying to sound emollient. On the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show today, he said he wouldn’t stop May offering more money to the EU to get a deal – despite the fact that he shares the blame for Vote Leave’s lie that we send £350 million a week to the EU.
But don’t be fooled. Gove’s goal is to do whatever it takes to get out of the EU and he is smart enough to know that trying to crash out with no deal at all might torpedo his dream. Once we are out of the EU, he wants a very hard Brexit indeed.
So watch out for Gove. He’s clever, ambitious and dangerous.
