A few thoughts on Mr Gove and Mr Johnson
Mr Gove first. Yesterday, a civil servant wrote to me about the time he was in the room when the former education secretary attended a meeting of headteachers: “He deliberately went in and started being rude to them. He then said he was the kind of person who wants to walk into a room of people and smash a vase — just to get attention and provoke a reaction. He craved the attention.”
I read it shortly after the current Justice Secretary had smashed a vase over Boris Johnson’s head. Michael Gove’s actions on Thursday were entirely unpredicted and at the same time entirely characteristic. First of all, he loves drama. For him, politics is and should be intensely theatrical. He does love attention and would have been thrilled by the shockwaves he sent through Westminster yesterday. One of the reasons he has consistently made headlines, even when he doesn’t intend to, is that he can’t bear to be dull in interviews or even in informal conversations. This is a very unusual trait in a politician, and it usually means they don’t get to the top. Gove hopes to prove an exception to the rule.
Second, he is a radical. As I suggested in my profile of him in the New Statesman, this is a temperament as much as a philosophy. He is consistently drawn to grand visions and sweeping gestures: invade and democratise Iraq; revolutionise the school system; transform prisons; free the UK from the EU. The grind of amelioration and compromise bores him. It is said that much of his frustration with his prospective partner was to do with Johnson’s refusal to agree ‘clear red lines’; his evident intention to muddle through. Gove hates the idea of muddling through. He very un-conservative in that sense; Paine, not Burke.
Third, Gove has an unshakeable faith in his own ability to articulate and rationalise whatever decisions he takes, even when those decisions are taken without forethought. As he said to the education select committee of his somewhat haphazard reforms, “coherence comes at the end of the process”. He’s quite content to smash the vase first and to work out the theory of why he did it afterwards.
He’s right to be confident in this ability, because he is and always has been highly intelligent and hyper-fluent. But it makes others cautious of him. Many Tory MPs will find it not just disreputable but downright weird that Gove could have been so convincing in his selling in of Johnson as PM one day, and so equally convincing in trashing him the next. My predictions are worth very little, but I don’t think he’ll make it. An atmosphere of volatility surrounds Gove. It is difficult to fully trust him, because he is inherently unpredictable.
To Mr Johnson. There is an argument, with which I have sympathy, that Remainers have lost their last best hope. Boris didn’t, in the end, seem that keen on Leaving (hence his Telegraph piece, hence — apparently — Gove’s frustration with him). Given his considerable charm, he might have been able to persuade the country to follow a course of inaction. At times like these, a slippery, unprincipled bastard is exactly what’s called for.
There’s something in this but ultimately I reject it, because Johnson is so plainly unsuited to the job of PM. He doesn’t have the focus, the people skills or the policy chops. So even if he had got to Number Ten and tried to dance his way around the elephant in the cabinet room, he would have been found out, and the counter-reaction would have been radical and irreversible. The problem with slippery bastards is that they have a high propensity to slip up.
One of the very few things about which I’ve been remotely prescient this year is my inherent scepticism of Johnson’s chances of being PM, even when his stock was highest. Yes, voters liked him, but that didn’t mean they took him seriously as a potential leader.
Why did commentators overrate Johnson? I think it’s because they assumed he was an experienced politician. But he is a novice. Boris Johnson entered frontline politics for the first time on February 21st, 2016, when he declared for Brexit. Indeed you might even argue his first day was last Friday, after the referendum result.
Being London mayor simply does not prepare you for top level national politics. You face no opposition, either in your own party’s ranks, or outside them. You have no powers over tax and spending. Your job is to influence institutions and politicians, and to project an image of the city, and although it’s possible to do more with the role, you can get away with doing just that. You don’t need to do the difficult work of building political alliances, making and quelling enemies, riding powerful cross-currents of public opinion.
In fact, being London mayor before you’ve done national politics is probably harmful to your chances of succeeding at the top level. Someone who used to report on City Hall told me how Johnson would turn up very late for assembly sessions, looking disheveled, and sounding under-briefed, then charm his way through the meeting, because really, what did it matter. If that’s all you’ve known, it’s easy to assume that’s all it takes.
