The big question that Michael Gove still has to answer

Michael Gove had two clear aims in his leadership campaign launch speech. The first was to explain what the hell he’d just done, which he did using emotive language and a trembling voice. Sounding almost like a Shakespearean hero struggling with destiny, the Justice Secretary insisted that he had ‘never thought I’d be in this position’ and that ‘I did not want it, indeed I did almost everything not to be a candidate for the leadership of this party’. He then told the audience that he lacks charisma, which is indeed something that those who are Gove sceptics are worried about when it comes to persuading the country to vote for a Conservative party led by Gove. But he had to stand, he said, in rather melodramatic tones:

‘That realisation meant that I once more faced a difficult decision. Could I recommend to friends, colleagues and the country a course in which I no longer believed? I could not.