Michael Gove’s Late Night Twitter Giveaway

After author Robert Harris pondered the speech given yesterday by Michael “Oiky” Gove, in which he attempted to channel the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal Democrats but failed, he summarised what he saw as wrong with it. “Sorry to bang on about that Gove speech, but when he analyses the ‘morbid symptoms’ of the age he fails to see that he and Johnson - newspaper columnists with little experience of ordinary life but now in charge of the country - they ARE the morbid symptoms”.

Gove was most put out at this forthright expression of adverse comment, and immediately took out a very large onion. “I was a child in care, whose adoptive father ran a business destroyed by the EU, I have family members who live with serious disabilities - let down by Holyrood - I introduced education reforms to help the poorest - but some people won’t learn”. All that and Sarah Vine too. It must be hell in there.

But his response was as instructive as it was plain flat wrong: as the Guardian’s Scotland editor Severin Carrell revealed back in 2016, “Michael Gove's father denies his company was destroyed by EU policies … Ernest Gove says he sold fish processing firm in Aberdeen voluntarily, contradicting son’s claims”. And the pushback was only starting.

Fionna O’Leary was unimpressed. “If you had more respect and gratitude for your adoptive parents you would tell the truth as your Dad tells it. But then. truth telling is not common in your circles (excepting your Dad) is it?" Liz Gerard added “And some people won't listen to their parents. Your father said when you first touted that ‘ruined by the EU’ line that it wasn't true. I guess it still isn’t”. Then we came to the “child in care” claim.

This had been previously contradicted by, er, himself, in an article in the Murdoch Sun. As befits a Murdoch asset, the piece talked about the 2016 Tory leadership election, how “Oiky” had stabbed Bozo The Clown in the back by splitting from him, and told readers “Never mind that David Cameron was a close family friend and Boris Johnson an old university mate. Instead Gove may now seize the throne”. The one in the bathroom?

And he said this about his adoption. “‘I was four months old when I was adopted,’ Gove said in 2010. ‘I don’t know if I was taken from my birth mother at a relatively early age and placed in the hands of carers. All I know is the process of finding and matching me with Mum and Dad was four months.’” So he doesn’t know if he was a “child in care”.

Added to all of that is his demotion from the DfE by Young Dave because he was perceived as a liability - as were his two departmental polecats, one of whom was Dominic Cummings. In that one Tweet, we find Michael Gove flat-out lying, playing the victim, and blaming others for his poor image. As well as another revealing detail.

It was sent at 2324 hours yesterday - late in the evening, the time of day when his wife so often Tweets the kind of comments that she might not have uttered earlier in the day.

The man who would pull the strings behind the throne. No wonder the country is going down the pan.

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