Why is Michael Gove gaslighting himself about the Tories’ achievements?

Michael Gove has written a staunch defence of the government’s 14 years of ‘achievements’ for Conservative Home. ‘Do we really want to go back to square one?’ the Tory MP and ‘levelling-up secretary’ asks, reminding us of the dim, dark and distant days of the country after 13 years under Labour.

If that was genuinely on offer, I’d snap Gove’s hand off. It may seem hard to remember but in 2009 it was still generally understood that jokes are jokes and not statements of genocidal intent, that there are two sexes, that economic growth is a pretty spiffing idea and that the police are there to enforce civic order. Yes, there were many problems and incipient disasters clearly looming, many of those the products of the Labour administration. But the nation voted the Tories in to deal with those problems – instead they made almost all of them far, far worse.

Gove’s long and often bizarre defence of 14 worse-than-wasted years is a bit uncanny. He is a very intelligent and capable man. But like all of us, he has to live with himself. We all tell ourselves stories to get by in the world, editing our memories and rewriting and retconning our pasts to make ourselves heroes, our failures and flaws reimagined as picturesque and bold rather than caddish or idiotic. The trick with that is to make it tally at least slightly with reality. Here, Gove is on a sticky wicket.

The brass neck of saying ‘Just look at all of our achievements!’ is an achievement in itself. Gove is saying it to a country that’s demoralised, divided, angry and skint; a nation where trying to get a GP appointment is like chasing quicksilver; where the stifling new religion of equality, diversity and inclusion has infected everything from sitcoms to the army; where there are weekly demonstrations of mass ethnic hatred on city streets and the police nod them by. The nerve of him!

Gove begins his piece, unwisely, by mocking a boastful, self-aggrandising speech made by Gordon Brown doing exactly the same thing late in his premiership. Everything he criticises Brown for is right, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t guilty of the identical sin. This is a bit like PMQs, which has become a mutual roast in which Sunak says nasty things about how awful Starmer is, and Starmer says nasty things about how awful Sunak is – and they are both right, because they are both awful.

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Even so, Gove displays a level of complacency and solipsism that’s quite staggering. He wangs on at length about ‘social justice’ and how wonderful Britain’s universities are, which are both worthy of a Harry Hill look to camera. His piece reminds me of a starlet doing PR for a duff movie that they know damn well is a duff movie – hoping against hope that their stinker won’t flop.

But then what choice does Gove have? He can hardly appeal to voters by saying ‘we’ve made a total pigs ear of all this – vote Conservative!’ Put yourself in Gove’s shoes: he can’t admit that it’s all been a pointless waste of time, or worse. I wonder, can he even admit it to himself?

Gaslighting is one of the big words of our day but this an even weirder version of it; someone gaslighting himself. But Gove isn’t the only one to have fallen into this trap: we also see this syndrome, more and more, in the behaviour of some of public bodies and institutions.

Just last week, we saw the conclusive victory of gender-critical Professor Jo Phoenix in her case against the Open University (OU). The judgment of the employment tribunal was damning – it found that the OU had discriminated against Phoenix, who had been intimidated in a ‘targeted campaign of harassment’.

Professor Tim Blackman, vice-chancellor of the OU, reacted to the judgment not with a grovelling apology but with a mealy-mouthed statement:

‘We are deeply concerned about the wellbeing of everyone involved in the case and acknowledge the significant impact it has had on the claimant, the witnesses and many other colleagues. Our priority has been to protect freedom of speech while respecting legal rights and protections.’

This from a man whose organisation was found to have behaved appallingly – but he still just cannot take the loss.

Phoenix wasn’t alone in the ordeal she faced. There are plenty of other cases involving employees hounded for ‘gender critical beliefs’, i.e. stating there are two sexes. The self-gaslighting of these employers and institutions who go after such individuals is at incredible levels – to the point where they would rather lose thousands of pounds than face the reality of the law.

The judgment of the International Court of Justice in South Africa’s ludicrous case against Israel led to more colossal displays of self-gaslighting. Various mainstream commentators tried to ignore the verdict and portray it for something that it wasn’t.

Don’t get me wrong: a bit of self-gaslighting in daily domestic life may be permissible. There’s nothing unusual about hiding final payment demands behind the clock on the mantelpiece, or pretending that it was you who dumped your boyfriend rather than him. But self-gaslighting should end at the front door – and certainly not be something you do when you’re supposed to be running the country. Michael Gove should know better than to pretend the 14 years of Tory rule have been anything other than a dismal failure.