The first quality that strikes you about Michael Gove, like the Conservative Party itself, is his endurance. For 13 years in office Gove has endured minor successes and major humiliations; he’s endured six ministerial jobs and some chastened spells on the back benches between them; he’s endured two stalled attempts to seize 10 Downing Street, each demonstrating that he was not fit to be prime minister by the humbling way that he failed.
When he was education secretary in the early 2010s, academics described Gove as “ignorant” and “ghastly”, and a member of the National Union of Teachers labelled him “a demented Dalek on speed”. After Gove was involved in yet another bust-up with the teaching unions, David Cameron tried to ameliorate a furious Nick Clegg by reminding him that Gove was “basically a bit of a Maoist”. Louise Richardson, then the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, said she was “embarrassed” that Gove was an alumnus after the role he played during the Brexit referendum, when he claimed that the British people had “had enough of experts”.
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