Gove, a man so unsuited to the satanic machinations of high office that he looks like a permanently startled guppy, made a really strange boo this week by suggesting a collection of rich monarchists buy the Queen a £60 million yacht for her diamond Jubilee.
Really? A yacht? Men just can’t buy presents, can they? Quite aside from the fact that a floating shagpad with a 12-person crew, a Jacuzzi, an indoor gym, and four on-board jetskis is the last thing anyone should spaff cash on right now, why did Gove think she actually wanted a yacht? That she wouldn’t prefer a really nice soap, or a charming footstool? A toy for the corgis, or a Learn How to Paint Watercolours step-by-step guide? Yachts are only ever hideous, from the 100ft penis extension owned by Aristotle Onassis — complete with bar-stools made of whale foreskin — to the grim supertankers that run aground off the coast of Italy.
And even if the Queen really loved Britannia — her single tear at her decommissioning in 1997 certainly suggested this — she is unlikely, at 85, to want to spend any more time slurping around northern waters now, sitting, grim-faced and damply blanketed in a dripping, darkened hull, on a two-week holiday with 22 relatives and only one set of Boggle.
The whole thing reeks of a crazed panic buy. Gove clearly woke up in the middle of the night, thought, the Jubilee’s only months away, we still haven’t done anything, no one ever gets her anything really good, let’s get her a big flash boat! So off he rushed, and now he looks like the man at a 50th wedding anniversary who’s turned up with a massive leg of pork.
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