On 2/11/18, Micheal Gove appeared on the Andrew Marr show, and offered a deep and incisive analysis for the potential future outcomes of the upcoming Brexit debate.

“If we don’t vote for this deal the alternates are no deal or no Brexit” he opined , before adding a few  moments later, “if we don’t vote for this deal there may be a majority in the House of Commons for a second referendum”.

So if Grumpy can interpret this, if May’s deal is voted out, then it might be ‘no deal’ … or again, it might be ‘no Brexit’ … or even it may be a ‘second referendum’. He left out an EEA type scenario, but presumably chose not to mention this outcome in case it was judged as being better than May’s sell out. Maybe not so deep or incisive as simply obvious, having simply enumerated all the alternatives.

Under Cameron, Gove wrote an essay about his reasons to support the Leave Campaign (yes, indeed). His objections were not about any aspect of a ‘deal’ (since there wasn’t one at that time), but on his deep seated, and carefully considered objections to to the  European Union as an institution.

Here is a very small sample of his thoughts; / the laws we must all obey and the taxes we must all pay should be decided by people we choose and who we can throw out if we want change / the European Union prevents us being able to change huge swathes of law and stops us being able to choose who makes critical decisions which affect all our lives / the European Union, despite the undoubted idealism of its founders and the good intentions of so many leaders, has proved a failure on so many fronts. The euro has created economic misery for Europe’s poorest people. European Union regulation has entrenched mass unemployment. / The EU is an institution rooted in the past and is proving incapable of reforming to meet the big technological, demographic and economic challenges of our time / As a minister I’ve seen hundreds of new EU rules cross my desk, none of which were requested by the UK Parliament, none of which I or any other British politician could alter in any way and none of which made us freer, richer or fairer./

Grumpy has news for Mr Gove. The May deal does not release us from any of these fundamental, structural, flaws in the EU, but places us in a worse position.  Simply look at the last of his beliefs in the foregoing; taking rules without any representation whatsoever is now baked into the future relationship.

Gove’s feeble and intellectually meaningless non-assessment shows him up as an apologist for May, and a desperately insincere turncoat on his own deeply held views on the EU.   However, his thinking may be more Machiavellian than flawed, in that he is gambling that, with the Brexiteers probably out of office in most future scenarios, and May heading for the exit, he at least leaves possibility of achieving some role  gong forward.

Rue the day.