Michael gove

Even by the standards of Westminster politics, yesterday's developments will be remembered for a long time. But meanwhile, in the short-term, Michael Gove's decision to launch his own campaign - and Boris' subsequent move to drop out - favours only one person in the Tory leadership race: Theresa May. The Home Secretary made her pitch as the quieter candidate who would just get on with the job. Amidst the noise of what looks set to be a nasty leadership campaign, that strategy already seems to be paying off. This morning, May has won the backing of the Daily Mail. The paper described yesterday as one of the most 'unedifying days in modern politics'.

Oh dear. This morning Sarah Vine surprised Daily Mail readers after she declared in her column that both she and her husband Michael Gove had been 'charged with implementing the instructions of 17 million people' following the Leave vote. While Vine's central role in the Brexit negotiations prompted laughter in some quarters, it now transpires that she has been taking on a very hands-on role indeed. Sky News have been passed an email from Vine setting out the Justice Secretary's leadership plotting after she accidentally cc'ed in a member of public. The email -- sent yesterday -- raises some awkward questions for the pair.

The Tory leaders of Vote Leave, those supposedly civilised and intelligent men, are creating the conditions for a mass far-right movement in England. They have lined up the ingredients like a poisoner mixing a potion, and I can almost feel the convulsion that will follow. They have treated the electorate like children. They pretended that they could cut or even stop immigration from the EU and have a growing economy too. No hard choices, they said. No costs or trade-offs. Now the Tory wing of the Brexit campaign, the friends of the City and big business, insists that we should remain part of the single market. So should you, if your job depends on Britain continuing to have access to EU markets, or you do not want your taxes to rise and services cut.

Westminster is still digesting what happened on Thursday night. But before Britain can turn itself to the big question of how to leave the EU, a new Prime Minister has to be chosen by the Tory party. Nearly every Tory MP I’ve spoken to since Friday morning is of the view that the new PM will have to be an Outer. They argue that the public would find it find odd to vote for Britain to leave, and then have a new PM chosen who was on the losing side in the referendum. There are, as I report in The Sun this morning, Cabinet Ministers who want Michael Gove to run. They think he would be the best PM of the Outers and that he would find it easier to reunite the party than Boris. But, I understand, Gove is not planning to put himself forward.

It was a nice touch that MPs sat in each other’s seats in the Commons during the tributes to Jo Cox on Monday. I hope it helped remind Tories where they’ll be sitting permanently after 2020 if they don’t bind the party’s wounds on Friday. If Remain wins, then everyone must coalesce around David Cameron; if it’s Leave then Michael Gove. These things were managed much better before 1965 when the Queen decided on Tory leaders. For all his reservations about the premiership, Gove wouldn’t refuse Her Majesty’s request to form a government, not in the year of her 90th birthday. How do you think Jeremy Corbyn voted in the privacy of the booth?

One consequence of David Cameron’s refusal to take part in any ‘Blue on Blue’ debates is that he and Michael Gove are appearing several days apart on BBC Question Time. Tonight, it was Gove’s turn to face the studio audience. In reply to the first question, Gove made clear that—in the event of Britain voting to leave—he wouldn’t support the so-called ‘punishment Budget’ that George Osborne set out today. Gove said that the Remain campaign were ‘turning it up to 11’ on the scare stories as polling day approached. Though, interestingly, he studiously avoided any personal criticism of Osborne. With the polls tightening the Remainers are getting more passionate, and Gove faced some fairly hostile questions from the audience.

The only arguments that matter in politics today are the arguments on the right. The only futures that are possible to imagine are those offered by the different strands of right-wing thought. The right’s arguments are not good to my mind. Nor are the futures it offers desirable. It is just that the right’s opponents are all but absent from the debate. The future of the country is up for grabs, but only the right hand of England is reaching up to seize it. The journalist in me almost hopes that the ‘leave’ campaign wins. The lies it has told will then be clear, and the liberal press will have years of fun tearing into Johnson, Gove and Farage.