Why ‘snake’ Michael Gove won’t be invited back to No 10 any time soon

It was only last week that Liz Truss invited Michael Gove into No 10 to see how he might be able to help her fledgling administration.

Although the Prime Minister had refused to include the former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in her Cabinet - like her predecessors, Ms Truss recognised the importance of keeping mercurial, machiavellian Gove inside the proverbial tent, urinating out - rather than the other way round.

Advisors warned against it, mindful of the former Times journalist’s well-honed reputation for political backstabbing but the meeting went ahead anyway.

On Sunday, their worst fears were realised when Gove, 55, declared the scrapping of the 45 per cent tax rate was “not Conservative”, forcing Ms Truss and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng into an embarrassing U-turn on one of the key planks of their mini-Budget.

The blow was doubly painful for Ms Truss, 47, since she had also helped her former Cabinet colleague through a difficult period following his separation from his wife of 20 years, Daily Mail journalist Sarah Vine, in June last year.

Despite outranking Gove in Cabinet, when she was foreign secretary Ms Truss agreed for the homeless father-of-two to stay at her official London residence, Carlton Gardens, a sumptuous 19th-century grace-and-favour property located a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace.

As one insider put it last night: “Gove is an absolute snake. The way he has treated Liz is absolutely appalling. She called him in last week and asked him to help and this is how he repays her.”

As well as leading a rebellion over the top rate of tax, Gove is now angling for a climbdown on the Government’s proposal to increase benefits in line with wages rather than inflation.

Gove, who on Monday was described by Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Business Secretary, as the “Tory party’s version of Peter Mandelson”, told Times Radio that while he would probably now vote for Ms Truss’s fiscal plan, he would oppose any move to stop linking benefits to inflation. “I would need a lot of persuading to move away from that,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want to prejudge an argument that was put in front of me before the argument was made.

“Because in crises, you sometimes have to do things and embrace policies that would in other circumstances be deeply unattractive.”

Behind the scenes, Downing Street aides are becoming increasingly exasperated by “treacherous” Gove’s unhelpful interventions as he continues to appear at multiple fringe events at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham.

Yet he has forever proved a thorn in the side of successive prime ministers. Even before he famously stabbed Boris Johnson in the back by running against him in the 2016 Tory leadership race, he had gained a reputation as a “shape shifter” while a minister in David Cameron’s government.

According to a source close to the former prime minister: “Michael used to infuriate David. He used to say to him: ‘Michael, I don’t need your rhetoric, I need your ideas’. But the trouble with Gove is, he’s an actor. If you told him to make an argument for corporal punishment, he’d make it. If you told him to be a socialist, he’d do it. One minute he’d be arguing for tax and spend, the next, tax cuts. Scratch the surface and there’s nothing there.”

An insider who worked alongside Gove and Johnson agreed he had “many faces”, saying: “He goes on these political journeys. He was a Brexiteer but you get the impression that if there was another referendum tomorrow, he’d vote remain.

“He’s become socially much more left-wing in recent years.”

The source added that prime ministers seemed to feel compelled to keep him on-side because of his “extensive network”.

“Because he used to work for the Times and his ex-wife works for the Mail there’s this perception that he has got a hotline to two newspaper groups.

“Gove’s network is everywhere. He has these young, clever men placed all over the place who are all massively loyal to him.”

Apparently when Johnson finally sacked Gove in July, a couple of special advisors who worked for the former prime minister stormed off in tears.

Badenoch ‘probably being played by Michael’

Some MPs now suspect that Gove is now using his protege Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, who worked under him as a minister in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, as his Cabinet mouthpiece. “Kemi doesn’t seem to realise she’s probably being played by Michael,” said one.

On Tuesday, Mrs Badenoch, who backed Gove in the 2019 leadership race, said she had “been shouting at him a lot since Sunday morning”.

The MP for Surrey Heath had a rather testy relationship with Truss when they worked together in Johnson’s cabinet. According to one insider, the pair often came to blows over the Northern Ireland Protocol, which was included in both of their briefs. “Liz wanted to go quite hard line on it and Michael wanted to go extremely soft. She felt that he was constantly calling up the Sunday papers and briefing against her.”

Ukraine was another source of tension. “Liz was being quite gung ho, basically riding on Boris’s wave. Priti (Patel) was getting a kicking in the papers over the visa scheme and then Gove suddenly started briefing that Ukrainians should be housed in the confiscated homes of Russian oligarchs. It was utter fantasy which wouldn’t have ever worked from a legal perspective but it served to make Michael look good, Liz look weak and Priti look stupid.”

On Tuesday, Gove’s behaviour remained the talk of conference, with allies of Ms Truss openly discussing how he might get his comeuppance. Conservative Party chairman Jake Berry has already warned that rebellious MPs face having the whip removed. But as the subject of yet another party psychodrama, there’s a sense that some Tories are plotting a special kind of revenge against their resident agent provocateur.