‘Politics exacts a very high price’: an interview with Michael Gove

What is Boris Johnson’s government for? The answer, we’re often told, is ‘levelling up’. So far this has been a slogan without much meaning. More than two years on from Johnson’s election victory, it has been left to Michael Gove, as the new Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, to define the concept. He intended to set out his plans before Christmas, but Covid stopped that. It nearly stopped this interview, too. Under the government’s rules at the time, Gove is in self-isolation because he met Barnaby Joyce, Australia’s deputy prime minister, who then tested positive for Covid, possibly the Omicron variant. It means we have to speak over a computer screen.

Most cabinet ministers are, at best, lukewarm about the case for the government’s new Covid rules. Gove has the opposite worry. He fears that more measures might be needed sooner rather than later. He is, as so often during the pandemic, on the hawkish side of the argument.