Sarah Vine lifts the lid on Michael Gove’s beard

There has been much speculation this week regarding rumours that Michael Gove has a beard. The former Justice Secretary was spotted on Tuesday in the Palace of Westminster with what appeared to be a new bout of facial hair. Today photos have emerged of Gove’s whiskers, as his wife Sarah Vine confirmed the news in Wednesday’s Daily Mail.

Alas, she has given the beard a lukewarm verdict. Vine says that although Gove is ‘enjoying his new hipster look’, she’s growing tired of men getting to let their ‘facial hair grow wild and free as they relax their regimes’ in summer. Instead she would like to turn the tables so that the woman don’t need to extract ‘every last vestige of bodily fuzz’:

‘I can’t be the only woman who wishes these tonsorial trends were reversed — and that for once we could be the ones to, er, let our hair down on holiday.’

Perhaps Vine ought to lead by example…