Sarah Vine’s account of the misery of being Mrs Michael Gove
Another Tory account of the worst successive governments in modern history, with barely a sorry in it. Another magnificent acquisition from Beckenham library, just to reassure you, dear loyal readers, that I’m not contributing a penny to Sarah Vine’s hardship fund. More of that later.Think of this as selfless public service on my part. I’ve read this dull trudge so that you don’t have to.
On the surface, this was a book with massive potential. It tells the story, from an insider’s point of view, of the rise and fall of Michael Gove, one of the key movers and shakers in the Cameron project, and Brexit, and its aftermath. It’s a tale rich in snobbery, sycophancy, the psychological alienation of the class traitor and Shakespearean levels of betrayal. Throw in a broken marriage and a trail of lost friendships and you have a recipe for a juicy stew. Unfortunately, it tastes like a tin of bland, mass -produced soup with not enough salt.
Just like that other towering political tome, Ungovernable by that Complete Unknown, Simon Hart, Vine’s book is a virtuoso display of Not Reading The Room. The levels of denial, delusion and deceit are off the scale. Vine and her ilk simply cannot conceive that any other government than a Conservative one is either possible or legitimate. Any break in that hegemony is merely a temporary blip, an annoying hiatus while the ruling class have to wait a bit until the billionaires do their work through the media, mainstream and social, telling enough lies to make the electorate forget exactly how ghastly they were in office. For years the enemy for the Ghastly Party was Labour, but strange things have happened in recent years. Now, Labour in government have metamorphosed into a vile tribute act for the people they replaced, saying and enacting a whole series of authoritarian, dumbass policy positions that are just as bad ( and in some cases worse) of those espoused by the party that have just been ousted. Their brilliant advisors have concluded that the thing that will really seal the deal with an electorate who were heartily sickened by the corruption and incompetence of the Tories, apparently untouched by the collapse of civil society and its infrastructure, is to, um, pretend to be the Tories. New Labour transformed miraculously into New Tory. Was this Blair’s secret plan all along? Yes, Peter, that will do it. You really are a tactical and strategic genius.
I digress. Vine’s book provides a terrifying portrait of the world inhabited by the ruling classes and those temporarily given house room in return for services rendered: Skiing holidays (where she copped off with Michael Gove – that tells you how bad it must have been), Tuscan villas, hobnobbing with minor royals, wine-fueled jollies at Chequers. And it’s made very clear that both Gove and Vine were intruders, not quite made of the same right stuff as the Golden Cameroons and their entourage. There’s a telling recollection of George Osborne’s reaction to the news that Gove was hitching his colours to the Leave campaign.
“But..but..” he spluttered, “We made Michael Gove. Who was he before? He owes us his whole bloody career! How can he not support us?”
Class will out. In their eyes, Gove and Vine (particularly Gove), were oiks, to be laughed at behind their backs. Vine shows a Gove desperate to keep up, to be accepted, to varnish over his background. Spending too much on wine, clothes, stuff, anything and everything to signal he knew what the accessories were that were needed to keep your place, socially and in terms of your career, at the top table.
Vine is also strangely keen to put to bed, as it were, the persistent rumours that have dogged Gove about his sexuality. To do so she furnishes the sympathetic reader with clinching details about Michael’s life, including how he is always drenched in the most expensive and exclusive fragrances, beautifully dressed and before he met Vine shared a number of flats with scores of very gay and very out men. Honestly, it’s astonishing the hurtful rumours began in the first place.
“Michael enjoyed the intellectual company of men probably more than women. And he did have a lot of gay friends (still does) plus as a minister he had a habit of surrounding himself with incredibly handsome gay men. But that was all circumstantial. A few swallows do not a summer make.”
Vine’s razor sharp wielding of evidence to the fore as usual. That’s those rumours comprehensively scotched.
Other details are helpfully provided to give a full and rounded picture of Gove the polymath. Her account of his heroic struggle to liberate Working Class children from the tentacles of the Communist Education Establishment (aka Local Education Authorities) is a textbook example of the careless disregard of facts so entrenched in Journalism (particularly those taking the Daily Mail shilling). Take a few vague and fuzzy impressions circulated endlessly by the establishment (Working Class kids are thick, State schools are useless, Posshies are innately superior), come up with some populist “common sense” solutions (make kids read 19th century Literature, turn the curriculum into a relentless list of facts to be learned, swamp the system with grinding and irrelevant exams and resits) and bingo you have a recipe that will inevitably have to be unpicked at some point in the future as the full scale of the disaster it will inevitably create becomes impossible to defend.
She adds stories that illustrate Gove’s difficulties in navigating the humdrum world of us mere mortals: repeatedly crashing the car, not doing the washing up, head always stuck in a very expensive book (he’s very clever you know). This latter habit was deployed very helpfully when Mrs Gove was in labour and again when they were moving out of the family home. Not for Mikey the workaday drudgery of filling packing cases or loading the car or checking on the children. No sir – he had to take care of the polymath type tasks, reading another impenetrable, expensive (but oh so impressve) tome on yet another 19th century Tory bigwig politician grandee. Much more effective than insisting the midwife bring on the epidural. “What is pain?” mused the Govester loftily, in between his wife’s screams, as he sipped another glass of vintage red after a hard day in the House of Commons.
Well, we all know what he got up to there. And in clubs across the land after his unfortunate divorce.
https://share.google/images/HtaTeVFvyBXyzu8Uv
The book only becomes interesting when Vine talks about her childhood. It’s a sad tale, and one that succeeds in creating some sympathy for the hitherto unlikeable author. Her father sounds absolutely ghastly and Vine’s life was made very difficult by the incessant undermining and criticising of her by a drunken, philandering patriarch. She’s done well to survive it, quite frankly.
But that’s as far as my sympathy extends. It’s hard to feel for someone who makes their money from endless articles in The Daily Mail churning out utter tripe – nasty, vindictive, xenophobic, classist nonsense designed to tickle the prejudices of their “patriotic” readership. She (and it) have a lot to answer for.
Finally, we get to the main psychological cry for help that runs like a golden thread throughout the book: her friendship with Samantha Cameron. Her evident neediness makes it uncomfortable to read at times. The fallout from Gove jumping ship over Brexit led to an immediate and draconian excommunication from the Golden Circle of The Cameroons. Vine howls in disbelief, pain, apology. You can almost see the snot-stained, tear-drenched face of the deranged jilted lover.
To parody John Crace, the digested read of this book can be only one thing:
“Please, please, Sam, (cos I’m her closest friend, readers) take me back. Be my friend again. Let me back in. Please… I’ll do the washing up”
The Old Grey Owl 