Gove's thunderbolt and Boris's breaking point: a shocking Tory morning (original) (raw)

Boris Johnson learned that his old Oxford University friend Michael Gove had betrayed him at the same time as the public did.

The former London mayor was still favourite to be Britain’s next prime minister at 9.01am, as he prepared to launch his campaign at an upmarket hotel near St James’s Park.

But unbeknown to him, Gove, his Brexit running mate, had already decided to stand against him to be Conservative leader about nine hours beforehand.

Until Thursday morning, Johnson thought he had Gove on board as his campaign chair, a double act Tory MPs had already begun describing as the “dream ticket” to succeed David Cameron. The old Etonian had in no way suspected a threat from such a close ally.

Gove had given no hint of his plans the night before as he attended the Conservative summer party, where Tory grandees buried the hatchet after the civil war of the EU referendum with their annual fundraising auction.

The justice secretary had also repeatedly said he had no ambitions to be Tory leader, that he was unequipped for the demands of the job, and that there would be better choices to replace Cameron.

But in hindsight, the Machiavellian move was perhaps not totally unpredictable. Months earlier, Gove took the decision to back leaving the EU, putting him at odds with his oldest political friends, David Cameron and George Osborne, and launching him into the intense spotlight of the EU referendum campaign.

Confirming his ambitions for Downing Street, Gove in his statement brutally cast Johnson as lacking the qualities and character to lead. He portrayed the decision as an agonising, last-minute choice after senior Johnson backers pressured him to enter the race. “Michael, it should be you,” he claimed they said.

However, furious MPs in Camp Johnson believe it was a long-planned stitchup by Gove and his advisers, after the justice secretary had his head turned during the EU referendum campaign by surveys suggesting he was the darling of the Tory membership. They also point to the public endorsement of Gove for prime minister by newspaper owner Rupert Murdoch at the Times media summit on Tuesday.

“Gove is a cunt who set this up from the start,” one friend of Johnson texted a political journalist at the Sun. More publicly, Jake Berry, Conservative MP and one of Johnson’s closest allies, tweeted: “There is a very deep pit reserved in Hell for such as he. #Gove.”

Those close to the justice secretary dispute the claim that supplanting Johnson was the plan all along, saying Gove changed his mind only after days of trying to negotiate with him about how to run the campaign. Along with fellow Boris backers, Dominic Raab and Nick Boles, they say Gove came to the conclusion late on Wednesday night that the former mayor of London did not have the right qualities to lead the country.

They say the embryo of the plan had formed at some point the day before. One Tory MP told the Guardian that he received a phone call from an ally of Gove on Tuesday in the daytime sounding him out about whether he thought the justice secretary would be a better man than Johnson for the job. “It all makes sense now, but at the time I just thought it was chatter,” he said.

If that account of the last-minute decision is correct, things moved pretty quickly. One aide for the newly formed Gove campaign was hired at about 1am on Thursday, as the justice secretary scrambled to put together a team for his bid to be announced before nominations closed at midday.

The next day, Gove met a group of 10 to 15 of Johnson’s backers, including Ed Vaizey, Boles and Raab, where Gove persuaded them to jump ship to a campaign of his own.

“He was ready to back Boris, but the closer it got, the harder he thought about it. He thought, it’s not the right person,” Vaizey said. “Follow that through to its conclusion: the logic is, if he doesn’t think Boris can do it, he has to step up to the plate and do it.”

Gove telephoned Lynton Crosby (pictured), the Tory strategist, before making his announcement. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Gove’s next move was to call Sir Lynton Crosby, the strategist behind Johnson’s campaign and Cameron’s successful election win.

It is said he tried to ring Johnson himself, but Johnson did not pick up the phone. That account is rejected by Johnson’s team, who said no attempt was made to contact him.

An aide to Gove emailed the press at 9.02am with a statement coming to the brutal conclusion that: “Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead.”

It came as a bolt from the blue for Johnson, who had known Gove for almost 30 years since their days as contemporaries at the Oxford Union debating club. Gove even backed Johnson’s bid to become president of the society in 1986, before going on to take the title himself two years later. “I was Boris’s stooge. I became a votary of the Boris cult,” the justice secretary wrote in 2005.

Although Gove has been seen as politically closer to Osborne and Cameron in recent years, the two men united and worked hand-in-hand during the successful EU referendum campaign after joining it on the same weekend in February. In the week after the result, they spent their time signing up Tory MPs to Johnson’s campaign and working out a strategy to take them both into Downing Street.

Those close to Johnson say Gove even had a hand in editing the Telegraph article that caused alarm among some Brexiters as it appeared to row back on the idea of ending free movement. “If the [Johnson leadership] campaign was sloppy, that’s down to the campaign chair, who was Gove,” one source close to Johnson said.

However, allies of Gove claim that the column was sent out without approval of anyone but Johnson himself. They say it was increasingly obvious to senior campaign team members that deadlines were being missed, undertakings not delivered, and a meeting for Conservative MPs abandoned at the last minute.

Rumours later swirled that Gove had snapped after Johnson blocked the hiring of his controversial aide and Brexit mastermind, Dominic Cummings. But Gove’s team insist this was not the case and Cummings was never involved in the campaign. Gove’s concerns were wider than choices about a single staff member, they say.

Michael Gove and his wife, Sarah Vine. Photograph: Rex

Feeding into this narrative, an email from Sarah Vine, Gove’s wife, was accidentally sent to a member of the public, leaking details of her reservations about Johnson’s popularity with members and media bosses. It also suggested Gove was having difficulty getting specifics out of Johnson about his job in the campaign and the direction of their strategy.

Aides insist this really was sent by accident, rather than being a deliberate leak. Although embarrassing at the time, it helpfully portrayed Gove as a reluctant, rather than calculating, turncoat.

The news of Gove’s candidacy hit the airwaves, internet and social media just half an hour before Theresa May, another serious frontrunner, was about to launch her bid for the leadership at the Royal United Services Institute in Westminster.

She had dozens of Conservative MPs, mostly remainers but some from the leave camp, gathered for the launch. They were stunned by the announcement.

Some had their heads in the hands from the shock, others were openly insulting both Gove and Johnson, heedless of the journalists in the crowd, and shouting rumours to each other about how the Machiavellian moves had come about. May’s aides were to be heard muttering about making sure her backers were all still onside amid rumours of a deluge of switchers from Johnson’s campaign to Gove.

However, the home secretary’s speech was barely delayed by the drama and she appeared to take the news relatively calmly, saying it was for Gove to speak for his experience working with Johnson and claiming that she welcomed an open field.

By the end of the event, more speculation was circulating that Johnson was considering pulling out, but it was confirmed that his speech was going ahead. Journalists ran from Whitehall across Westminster to the hotel where Johnson was preparing his launch, paying little attention to the news that another Brexiter, Andrea Leadsom, was also throwing her hat into the ring.

The sight of Tory MPs – David Davis, James Cleverly, Andrew Mitchell and Jake Berry – turning up to the launch made reporters confident that Johnson’s bid was going ahead as planned.

Johnson began his speech late, setting out his vision for the country and reeling off a list of his achievements as London mayor in an unusually muted fashion. Then, nine minutes in, the punchline came that the person to fulfil this vision was not Johnson himself. There were gasps and shock among the Tory MPs present, who had no idea their chosen man was about to withdraw. One, Nadine Dorries, appeared to be in tears.

One of the few to take the turn of events phlegmatically was Johnson’s father, Stanley, who said the appropriate phrase was “Et tu, Brute?” before going on to say he now thought Gove was the best choice.

The window for Tory leadership nominations to be sent to the party’s ruling 1922 Committee of backbenchers closed just minutes later at midday. There were five candidates announced: May, Gove, Leadsom, Stephen Crabb and Liam Fox.

And after years of speculation and manoeuvring, Johnson’s name was not on the list. Johnson once said that there was more chance of him being reincarnated as an olive or finding Elvis on Mars than becoming prime minister.

And thanks to the moves of his erstwhile friend, that appears to be a more accurate prediction than he could have imagined.