A few weeks ago I discovered that while he should have been focused on the fight of his life during the referendum campaign, David Cameron was instead obsessing over whether or not his justice secretary, Michael Gove, had had an affair with my husband, Dom Cummings, campaign director of Vote Leave.
The story was in the Mail on Sunday, who eked it out across two consecutive issues. On week one it kept Dom and Michael’s names under wraps (for ethical reasons, it said) but revealed the source of the thrilling bit of gossip to be an aide of Cameron’s called Gavin Williamson (now Chief Whip). Williamson had, said the MoS, dashed into No. 10 ‘in the heat of the bitter EU campaign’ to deliver news of the fling to the PM.
Even before I knew Dom was one of the Brokeback Brexiteers this seemed a very curious tale. What could have made Williamson so sure? Why did he rush to tell the PM, ‘in the heat of the campaign’? The story was written as if somehow Williamson thought a gay romance shed light on the otherwise inexplicable success of Vote Leave. Perhaps he imagined they were all fuelled by homoerotic passion in the manner of the Spartans.
The following week the MoS, recovered from its bout of ethics, printed the names of the secret lovers and I felt an odd mix of emotions. First sadness, that it wasn’t a more exciting revelation, then a glimmer of understanding, followed by a feeling of anxious shame which has stayed with me ever since.
The understanding was about what might have been Williamson’s motive. Not then, nor now, does David Cameron accept that his pal Gove — a lifelong Eurosceptic — chose to campaign for Leave for the sake of his country.
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