Could Michael Gove support Labour?

Now that Sir Keir Starmer has reaffirmed he is a socialist, interviewers are asking other leading Labour figures if they are too. The shadow business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, explains he is a Christian socialist, which makes me want to go back to Sir Keir, an unbeliever, and ask him how he thinks his atheist socialism differs from Marxism. Socialism is in essence an economic doctrine about the common ownership of (to use the famous Clause 4 wording) ‘the means of production, distribution and exchange’. How does Sir Keir believe that common ownership should be achieved? He may not want to say. It would be equally reasonable – and equally awkward politically – to ask Rishi Sunak whether he is a capitalist. I should like to know, because their answers might clarify the current confusion in which Tories hint at approval of socialist principles and Labour of capitalist ones, without quite saying what they mean.

I join the tributes to Michael Gove as he leaves parliament. He has been the longest-serving British cabinet minister since Lord Hailsham left in 1987, and one of the subtlest, most innovative and (in private) funniest. I must admit, though, to a sense of frustration. Michael is opaque, and likes to be. He is also, I suspect, ‘on a journey’. He might not go so far as to join the Labour party, but I would not be at all surprised if he were soon tasked by a Labour government with some interesting role designed to weaken Tory morale yet further – chairing the BBC, perhaps?

As we took our places at Frank Field’s funeral in Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, on Wednesday last week, rumour of an election announcement began to circulate. Frank would have enjoyed that. I found myself sitting next to Wes Streeting, with Ben Bradshaw and Dame Margaret Hodge nearby, and said I was pleased to see Labour represented since Frank’s relationship with his former party had ended in acrimony.