Did Michael Gove mean what he said?

00:00 04:37

Toby Young has narrated this article for you to listen to.

I thought the Spectator dinner for Michael Gove hosted by Fraser Nelson would be cancelled. To be clear, this wasn’t a dinner where the Ming vase would be passed from one custodian to another, witnessed by the magazine’s general staff. Rather, this was a dinner to celebrate Michael’s legacy as education secretary organised weeks earlier by Rachel Wolf, founder of the New Schools Network, and which Fraser had kindly agreed to host. But – talk about bad timing! – at 1.30 p.m. on the day it was due to take place it was announced that Michael would be succeeding Fraser as editor. That was a bit like Theresa May having agreed to host a dinner for Boris in Downing Street to celebrate his legacy as Spectator editor, only to discover that in the interim he’d ousted her as prime minister. Would it go ahead?

The answer is yes, obviously. As Fraser said, he could have asked Rachel to hold the dinner at a nearby restaurant, claiming he was exhausted after a difficult day. But that would have made it look like he was unhappy about the appointment, which he wasn’t. So the dinner went ahead.

Apart from Fraser, I was the only journalist, having played a part in making the free schools policy a reality. Every-one else was an ex-minister, a former civil servant or a retired policy wonk: essentially, the brains trust behind Michael’s education reforms.

So that was supposed to be the topic for the evening. But, of course, the Pinteresque subtext was the editorial succession. Could Fraser resist bringing up his and Michael’s disagreement over lockdown? Would the new broom reassure him that Ross Clark wouldn’t be fired, given that Michael is completely captured when it comes to the ‘climate emergency’? Bear in mind that the two hadn’t met since Sir Paul Marshall’s £100 million bid for the magazine.