WHAT a difference a month makes. At the start of October, Michael Gove, the newly former Levelling Up Secretary, guesting on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday show, was unimpressed by Liz Truss’s faltering, blustering defence of her mini-budget.

She acknowledged that, yes, she could have prepared the ground better. Gove’s crisp response – there was, he said, an “inadequate realisation at the top of government of the scale of change required” – came to be seen as the beginning of the end for the then PM.

Since then, Truss has fled, Rishi Sunak has been installed in her place, and Gove himself is back in his old job. It was as if Truss had just been a bad dream, which, now that we think about it, she probably was.

On yesterday’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday he was as brisk and imperturbable as ever. Had he expected to be back in Cabinet? “No”. Does this mean we will be seeing less of him in the nightclubs? A quick smile. “Yes”.

Earlier, asked whether he would apologise for Truss having been installed as leader, he said “Yes. We made a mistake. We took the wrong turn”. He also indicated that Truss’s plans for investment areas were no more. Anything that undermines environmental protection, he declared, was out.

He also touched on the latest Truss story, about her phone reportedly being hacked. Robust protocols were in place, he insisted.

Half an hour or so later, gove or take, he was being interviewed on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. So many urgent issues to discuss: security issues, Suella Braverman, security issues, Suella Braverman.

Kuenssberg was more tenacious about the Home Secretary’s alleged security breaches than Ridge had been. Braverman, she reminded viewers had sent a sensitive official document to her own email address and then forwarded it to someone else. It wasn’t a mere admin error: “That is a clear breach of security rules from someone who’s meant to be in charge of that, as Home Secretary”.

Gove dealt with the question with his usual reassurance. Suella had apologised and resigned: Sunak felt she deserved a second chance. Gove was glad that Braverman had returned to Cabinet, as she was a “first-rate, front-rank politician” (a phrase he had deployed when being interviewed by Ridge).

Kuenssberg persisted. An email sent by Braverman from her personal email address at 10.02am on October 19 (two hours after she had accidentally forwarded the sensitive document), came up on the big screen, email addresses redacted. “Please can you delete the message and ignore”, Braverman wrote.

“Now”, Kuenssberg said, “she’s obviously realised her mistake. But what does that message mean, do you think?” Gove responded that he didn’t know the detail of every message that was sent (which, of course, would be the case) and said the new email made sense in the context of the original one, the one that caused all the problems.

Wouldn’t it better, Kuenssberg pressed, if the government did what Labour was urging, and published all the documents immediately?

Gove’s reply was measured. Yes, he conceded, it was understandable that the media and the shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, should demand transparency and full publication. “But when we publish everything, we also potentially publish information that can compromise the effective operation not just of government but of national security itself”.

Braverman, he said, was brave, and making big changes. There was, he added, a phase in politics, to the effect that you only take flak if you’re over the target, and the Home Secretary was on target to deal with things.

He didn’t want to criticise the media (“I’ve been a journalist myself in the past”) but believed that “it becomes a distraction if people are asking these questions”.

Gove’s reply was measured. Yes, it was understandable that the media and the shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, should demand transparency and full publication. “But when we publish everything, we also potentially publish information that can compromise the effective operation not just of government but of national security itself”.
Braverman, he said, was brave, and making big changes. There was, he added, a phase in politics, to the effect that you only take flak if you’re over the target, and the Home Secretary was on target to deal with things. He didn’t want to criticise the media (“I’ve been a journalist myself in the past”) but believed that “it becomes a distraction if people are asking these questions”.
On both the shows, then, Gove made a spirited defence of his Cabinet colleague. The feeling remains, however, that further stories about Braverman will emerge. That redacted email could undermine her original account of how she responded to her breach; and we may yet see Gove defending her on TV shortly.
Elsewhere, reminding us of his taste for relatively straight talking, he conceded yesterday that Brexit had generated frictions (though, on balance, it had been “a significant success”) and cited Northern Ireland as an example where some things had not been “perfectly pitched”. And on housing, he spoke of problems with global supply chains affecting the cost of house-building.