Michael Gove
Michael Andrew Gove, Baron Gove is a British politician and journalist. A member of the House of Lords since 2025, he previously held senior Cabinet positions in Conservative governments between 2010 and 2024. He was the Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath from 2005 to 2024, during which he twice returned to the backbenches. He was a prominent figure in the 2016 referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union and stood for the Conservative leadership on two occasions. Gove has been editor of The Spectator since 2024.
Born in Aberdeen, Gove was in care until being adopted aged four months old, after which he was raised in the Kittybrewster area of the city. He attended the independent Robert Gordon's College and studied English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He then began a career as a journalist at The Press and Journal before having a long tenure as a leader writer at The Times. Elected for Surrey Heath at the 2005 general election, he was appointed Secretary of State for Education in the Cameron–Clegg coalition. He terminated the previous Labour government's Building Schools for the Future programme, reformed A-Level and GCSE qualifications in favour of final examinations, and responded to the Trojan Horse scandal. Four teachers' unions passed motions of no confidence in his policies at their 2013 conferences.
In the 2014 cabinet reshuffle, he was moved to the post of Government Chief Whip. Following the 2015 general election and the formation of the majority Cameron government, Gove was promoted to Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor. As the co-convenor of Vote Leave, Gove was seen, along with Boris Johnson, as one of the most prominent figures of the 2016 EU membership referendum. He was campaign manager for Johnson in the 2016 Conservative Party leadership election but withdrew his support on the morning Johnson was due to declare and announced his own candidacy, finishing behind Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom.
Upon the appointment of May as prime minister, Gove was dismissed from the Cabinet but joined the second May government as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs following the 2017 general election. In his second leadership bid, in 2019, Gove finished behind Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt. Following Johnson's victory, Gove was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with responsibility for no-deal Brexit preparations. He took on the additional role of Minister for the Cabinet Office in the 2020 cabinet reshuffle and was responsible for coordinating the Government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. After the 2021 cabinet reshuffle, he served as Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations until telling Johnson to resign during the July 2022 government crisis and being dismissed by Johnson. Under Rishi Sunak, he was reinstated to his previous roles of Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations. He stood down as an MP at the 2024 general election and was created a life peer in 2025.
Early life
Gove was born Graeme Andrew Logan on 26 August 1967. His biological mother, whom he originally understood to have been an unmarried Edinburgh student, was in fact a 23-year-old cookery demonstrator. Gove regarded Edinburgh as his birthplace until it was revealed in a biography in 2019 that he was born in a maternity hospital in Fonthill Road, Aberdeen. Logan was put into care soon after he was born.At the age of four months he was adopted by a couple in Aberdeen, Ernest and Christine Gove, by whom he was brought up. After he joined the Gove family, Logan's name was changed to Michael Andrew Gove. His adoptive father, Ernest, ran EE Gove and Sons, a fish processing business at Aberdeen Harbour in Torry. Established by Ernest's father, the business was sold by Ernest in the 1980s. Gove's adoptive mother, Christine, was a lab assistant at the University of Aberdeen, later working at the Aberdeen School for the Deaf.
Gove, his parents, and his adoptive sister Angela Christine lived in a small property in the Kittybrewster area of Aberdeen, before moving to a residence on Rosehill Drive. He was educated at two state schools, and later, on the recommendation of his primary school teacher, he sat and passed the entrance exam for the independent Robert Gordon's College.
At Robert Gordon's, classmates and teachers recalled him as confident and intellectually curious. According to a former teacher, "at the start of every lesson a hand would go up and it would be Michael". He rode an old-fashioned bicycle, wore suits, recited poetry, and participated enthusiastically in debates, although he was less strong at sport. Gove later recalled feeling intellectually out of place at home and described himself as a "swot" who asked questions from an early age. In 2012, he wrote an apology letter to his former French teacher for misbehaving in class.
Gove joined the Labour Party in 1983 and campaigned for the party in the 1983 general election. Outside of school, he spent time as a Sunday school teacher at Causewayend Church. As he entered sixth year, his father's business had collapsed and the family could no longer afford the school fees, so he won a scholarship. He served as a school prefect in his final two years.
Oxford
In 1985, Gove enrolled at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where he read English. While there he joined the Conservative Party. He became a member of the Oxford University Conservative Association and served as secretary of Aberdeen South Young Conservatives. During his first year, he met Boris Johnson and was an enthusiastic supporter of his campaign to be President of the Oxford Union. In an interview with Andrew Gimson, Gove remarked that at Oxford, Johnson was "quite the most brilliant extempore speaker of his generation". Gove was elected President of the Oxford Union for Hilary term 1987.While at Oxford and shortly afterwards, Gove participated in Cambridge Union debates where he sometimes used language that later drew criticism. In 1987, while president-elect of the Oxford Union, he took part in a debate on the British Empire. In his speech he said: "It may be moral to keep an empire because the fuzzy-wuzzies can't look after themselves. It may be immoral to keep an empire because the people of the Third World have an inalienable right to self-determination". In the same speech, he remarked that Britain under Margaret Thatcher was a "new empire" where "the happy South stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the Northerner". He then went on to say that "homosexuals thrive primarily upon short-term relations". These and other remarks he made shortly after university later drew criticism. Gove graduated with an upper second-class degree.
Early career
After university, when applying for a job at the Conservative Research Department, Gove was told he was "insufficiently political" and "insufficiently Conservative", so he turned to journalism. After passing an interview with editor Max Hastings, Gove briefly worked on The Daily Telegraphs Peterborough column, edited by David Twiston-Davies. He reportedly found regular shifts hard to come by and was told by Twiston-Davies that his talent lay "in libel". Struggling to make a living in London, he moved back to Aberdeen and became a trainee reporter and court reporter at The Press and Journal, where he spent several months on strike in the 1989–1990 dispute over union recognition and representation. From 1990 to 1991, he worked as a reporter for Scottish Television, with a brief interlude at Grampian Television in Aberdeen.After moving to UK-wide television in 1991, Gove worked for the BBC's On the Record, and the Channel 4 current affairs programme A Stab in the Dark, alongside David Baddiel and Tracey MacLeod. In 1994, he began working for the BBC's Today programme. In 1995, The Guardian identified Gove as part of "The Group", a circle of young Conservatives sceptical of John Major's leadership and critical of the welfare state and European integration, alongside figures such as Matthew d'Ancona, Paul Goodman, and Dean Godson. During Major's 1995 Conservative leadership contest, Gove revealed ahead of rival broadcasters that Welsh Secretary John Redwood would challenge the prime minister, drawing on his contacts within the Conservative Party.
In January 1996 he joined The Times as a leader writer and assumed posts as its comment editor, home affairs editor, assistant editor, and Saturday editor. He also wrote a weekly column on politics and current affairs for the paper from 1999 until 2005 and contributed to The Times Literary Supplement, Prospect magazine, and The Spectator. He was on good terms with the owner of the paper, Rupert Murdoch, whom Gove described in evidence before the Leveson Inquiry as "one of the most impressive and significant figures of the last 50 years". He wrote a sympathetic biography of Michael Portillo and a highly critical study of the Northern Ireland peace process, The Price of Peace, where he compared the Good Friday Agreement to appeasement of the Nazis in the 1930s. During his period at The Times he also broadcast regularly, on programmes including Any Questions?, The Week in Westminster, The Book Quiz, Moral Maze, and Newsnight Review.
Gove co-founded Policy Exchange, a conservative think tank launched in 2002, and chaired it for three years. He was seen as part of an influential group of Conservatives referred to as the Notting Hill set, which included David Cameron, George Osborne, Ed Vaizey, Nick Boles, and Rachel Whetstone. They were considered modernisers within the Conservative Party, combining socially liberal positions with an emphasis on environmental issues. Having been passed over for the editorship of The Times and seen his authority diminish, Gove began to focus on a political career. Cameron, who had long encouraged him privately, publicly urged him to enter politics, writing: "Give up the journalist's expense account and cast aside ambitions of editing the Thunderer. Gird up your loins and prepare for late nights sitting on uncomfortable green benches... In short, Michael, become a Tory MP." In 2004, Gove was commissioned to write a biography of Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke. On 5 July 2004, he won the Conservative candidacy for Surrey Heath, after the sitting MP Nick Hawkins was deselected by the local Conservative association amid disputes over his personal conduct. Gove then arranged to leave the staff of The Times, but was retained on a contract to write a weekly column for the newspaper and other such pieces as might be commissioned ad hoc. Gove has helped to write speeches for Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet ministers, including Peter Lilley and Michael Howard.