First as Secretary of State for Education and now as the chief architect of Brexit, in the public consciousness Michael Gove basks in the rosy glow of a Britain long since passed. O-levels, the Commonwealth, even the Australia from which Gove would derive his points-based immigration system, all these are twentieth-century constructs, but ask any one of Gove’s closest allies and you’ll find that his true penchant is for the late 1800s.
This was the high point of human civilisation. Most of the great British figures, from Clive of India to Benjamin Disraeli, had been and gone yet the country was still reaping their benefits, Queen Victoria still sat plumply atop her throne, and the British Empire was rapidly reaching its zenith.
Michael Gove sits at home in his dressing gown and slippers sipping on tea from a cup of fine china and tapping lightly his cigar on the side table. He has written that ‘For some of us Victorian costume dramas are not merely agreeable ways to while away Sunday evening but enactments of our inner fantasies […] I don’t think there has been a better time in our history’. He peers into the crown of the top hat he never dares wear in the outside world, and in his dreams he prospers.
The 1890s were the best of all. True Germany seemed on the rise, and there was ongoing conflict with the Boers, but the likes of Cecil Rhodes were busy ensuring a winning scramble for Africa, and through various wars and treaties the threat of Russia had largely abated. Britain still ruled the waves. Then in 1893 the Second Home Rule Bill was vetoed by the Lords, ensuring British dominion over Ireland.
Gove slicks back his hair and slips on his tailcoat. He is glad that a clean-shaven face is coming back into fashion, for he never liked any of those bearded fads which seemed to wax and wane over recent decades. Leaving aside his Dickens and his Tennyson, he steps out of his home into the bustling city of London, and looks across the Thames towards Tower Bridge, recently inaugurated.
But suddenly his world is slipping. Blinkingly from behind his glasses he murmurs something about Britain still being the greatest. But it has all been a beautiful dream, now suddenly dissipating, or worse – especially for a former Murdoch hack, as Michael Gove at once gropes for the control and revolts from the telly – a BBC Four history documentary.
