Gove, gone

‘There’s no shame in a cabinet to win the next election,’ declared an exasperated senior No. 10 figure on Tuesday night. This week’s reshuffle was not one for the purists: it was designed with campaigning, not governing, in mind. With less than ten months to go to polling day, politics trumps policy. This is why Michael Gove is moving from the Department for Education to become Chief Whip. The test of this shake-up will be whether the Tories win the next election or not.

This reshuffle demonstrated that Tory modernisation is not about measures anymore but men — and women. The party has spent most of David Cameron’s leadership trying to draw up policies to show it understands modern Britain and that it is not just the political wing of the privileged few. These efforts have had some success, but not enough. It still trails Labour by double digits on the issue of fairness and who is ‘on the side of people like me’.

This gap helps to explain the reshuffle’s emphasis on promoting those who don’t look like typical Tories — hence the promotions for women and those with working-class backgrounds. As one senior source said after the reshuffle, ‘The agenda stays the same but the government looks much more like the people we want to vote for it.’

The biggest surprise of this reshuffle was Gove’s new job. For years his education reform agenda has been central to the Cameron project. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have often lavished praise on him, but Gove has now been shuffled out.