Gove gets the gang back together

It’s not just Suella Braverman and Dominic Raab who have got their old jobs back. Following the Truss interregnum, normal service has been restored in Whitehall, with Michael Gove being handed another post in his fourth Conservative administration. The erudite Aberdonian has returned to the Department of Levelling Up – the ministry he left just last month – as its Secretary of State once more, beginning his speech to officials this afternoon ‘As I was saying before I was interrupted…’

Gove’s appointment has cheered many of the department’s long-suffering staff, relieved, at last, to have a minister skilled in the art of Whitehall warfare. The man himself has made clear that levelling up is a mission close to his heart, publishing a White Paper in February that drew on Renaissance Italy for inspiration. And that sense of a homecoming has only been strengthened by the return of his closest aides: Henry Newman, Josh Grimstone and Andrew Hood, all of whom join Gove as his special advisers once more.