Michael Gove’s Brexit regret is much too little, much too late

Not the least extraordinary thing about the campaign to leave the European Union is that it turns out no-one was in charge of it. Things just happened and decisions were just made without the oversight or knowledge of the most senior politicians whose support for the project was reckoned, with some reason, to be crucial to its essential success.

If Boris Johnson gave the Leave campaign a popular – and populist – presence in the nation’s television studios, Michael Gove gave it a certain intellectual credibility amongst the – admittedly small – percentage of the electorate that worries about such things. And with good reason: Gove’s intelligence, if not always his judgement, has never been in doubt. He has been a reforming minister in every department in which he has served. In his current role at the department of the environment – a top ten job after Brexit, incidentally – he sometimes gives the impression of being almost the only cabinet minister with even half an idea about what to do after the great day of national liberation arrives.