Such STRANGE times

The last few weeks of the EU referendum campaign in the UK and the days since the result became clear on 24 June have been some of the strangest I’ve known, the political sphere reaching into private life in an unprecedented and uncomfortable way. Life may revert to something nearer normal when the new Prime Minister* is in place and the country becomes more settled on its future path, uncertain though it is sure to be.

By the end of the year there will be books galore attempting to explain what has been going on. The journalist Tim Shipman, for example, is promising All Out War, the inside story of Brexit. By then the strange affair of the email sent on 28 June by Sarah Gove (Michael Gove’s wife, better known as the journalist, Sarah Vine) will probably be little more than a footnote, some background to her husband’s decision to run for the party leadership and Boris Johnson’s to withdraw. For the record though, here it is:

The email originally came into the hands of Sky News, though the clearer image above comes from Guido Fawkes. According to Sky:

An email sent to Michael Gove by his wife reveals concerns about the support Boris Johnson has in the party and the media. The email, which was also sent to the Justice Secretary's aides, was passed to Sky News.

Oddly, the email refers to “you” and “your” three times each, but also to “Michael”, as if he were a third party like “Henry” and “Beth”. Or as if all those three were copy addressees, not the main one.

When Gove emerged as a candidate, Ian Leslie, quite justifiably drew attention to a long New Statesman article presciently titled Michael Gove, the polite assassin, which he wrote back in October 2015. Fascinating throughout, one passage struck me:

…[Gove’s] closest adviser, Dominic Cummings. It is impossible to understand Gove’s time at Education, or indeed Gove, without considering his relationship with the man described by Nick Clegg as “loopy” and by others as brilliant or bullying, or both. … 

Cummings, like Gove, has a love of argument, as well as a suspicion, bordering on contempt, for those who compromise, muddle through and fail to pick sides. But he doesn’t have Gove’s politesse. He cares little – or even notices – what people think of him. In a departmental meeting, Gove might make his dissatisfaction clear by his tone, but it would be Cummings who told the civil servants they were a shambles, or who shut meetings down abruptly, and Cummings who sent around hectoring emails, with liberal use of capital letters, to staff in the department.

*The new PM – see my post in 2013, The Oxford Incumbency. From the Table there (2015A was, of course, the outcome last year), it would seem almost inevitable that the next Prime Minister will be either Teresa May or Michael Gove, the other three contenders not having gone to Oxford. May currently seems the far more likely of those two. However, these are strange times when referendums overturn the status quo – so who knows?

UPDATE 11 JULY

Teresa May will become Prime Minister on 13 July – the Oxford Incumbency continues, things must be getting back to normal!