The Mate of Murdoch shield: Gove gets an easy ride while The Sun hits Angela Rayner with old insinuations
... and Kelvin MacKenzie says the quiet bit out loud
When Kelvin MacKenzie was canned from The Sun for the final time — losing his gig as a columnist after calling the footballer Ross Barkley, who is of part-Nigerian descent, “a gorilla at a zoo” — Rupert Murdoch gained a very rabid type of enemy. Hell hath no fury like an old hack scorned.
Having MacKenzie inside the tent pissing out could be bad enough — the splashback from his repeated libelling of Elton John cost The Sun £1 million in damages — but now not even Murdoch can predict where the piss will land.
In recent years, MacKenzie has frequently turned the very same tactics — exaggeration, revelation, and aggression — that made him an unpleasantly effective Sun editor against his old firm and the big boss in particular. Most recently he dedicated a whole Spectator article to slamming the ‘modern’ Sun. It still reads like it’s entirely written by kipper tie-wearing time travellers from the 70s but MacKenzie deems it insufficiently cruel.
Now he’s turned his attention to the story of Michael Gove and Sarah Vine’s marriage split and unlike those who are still in papers, who are dancing around the dirty details, MacKenzie shouts the quiet bit and points the finger. This is not because he’s suddenly become a crusader for truth — sorry, had to stop typing there to laugh until my lungs hurt — but because he's the Steven Segal of former Sun editors; a bloated has-been out for revenge.
Journalists and columnists at News UK titles have worked for their whole careers to deny that Rupert Murdoch ultimately decides what they write and Kevlin MacKenzie… just… tweeted it out. Yesterday he wrote:
The Sun has known for months about the Gove-Vine separation but chose not to publish it as the Cabinet minister was a MoM (mate of Murdoch)
To anyone who watches the British press and media closely — or just reads this newsletter — that’s hardly a shocking revelation. But it’s something when it’s a formerly made man like MacKenzie saying those words. He’s breaking one of the key bits of omerta in British journalism: You simply have to insist that no one tells you what to write, implying that newspaper proprietors are entirely uninterested in power or influencing politics.
MacKenzie then moved on to the specifics of the Vine/Gove goings-on, saying:
Hilarious that Sarah Vine should ask for privacy about her marital woes when only a week ago in her MoS column she invaded her own privacy by pouring a thinly disguised bucket of shit all over Gove. She is paid a fortune to tear people apart and does it well. The biter bit.
On leaving Ms Vine, Gove rented a spare room in the flat of a govt. special advisor. The spad, who is gay, has spoken to reporters but says 1) There has been no Hancockian behaviour. 2) He can do better than Gove. Agree. No matter what sex, we could all do better than Gove.
MacKenzie is an inveterate liar who has lied at a professional level for over four decades so anything he says should be taken with such a large pinch of salt that doctors would be horrified. But his claim that Gove gets an easy ride because he’s a “mate of Murdoch” is supported by a teetering stack of evidence.
For a start, we have the words of Murdoch himself to go on. Back in 2016, when he was still using a Twitter account to make his editors nervous, Murdoch wrote in the wake of Gove declaring his support for Leave in the Brexit referendum:
Congratulations Michael Gove. Friends always knew his principles would overcome his personal friendships.
In February 2017 when Gove, then a backbencher, moonlit as a Times hack once again to interview Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch was in the room. As Gove and Kai Diekmann of Bild — also one of the Potempkin board of directors meant to guarantee The Times’ independence — spoke to Trump, Murdoch sat just out of shot. One News Corp insider told The Guardian at the time:
… Murdoch would be unlikely to have sat quietly throughout the interview and could just have introduced them at the beginning.
He appeared in none of the extensive pictures taken by The Times to promote the meeting. He was there and yet not there; Murdoch’s preferred state. He also avoided, unlike Gove, the indignity of posing with his thumbs aloft alongside the newly-elected president and a framed copy of Playboy.
In June 2017, Private Eye editor, Ian Hislop, told the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee that Gove’s return to The Times as a columnist, book reviewer (and interviewer of presidents) should be investigated. He was told that Gove’s £150,000 position with News UK had already been approved by the entirely toothless Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA).
Perma-smug Tory nodding dog and then-committee chair, Bernard Jenkin, asked Hislop in high dudgeon:
Are you seriously suggesting that someone whose profession is journalism should not be allowed to carry on that profession if they are no longer a minister?
Gove chose a new profession when he was elected as an MP in 2005. Briefly being out of cabinet would not really be an excuse to slope back into journalism as a part-time attack dog for a man who is regularly given favours by the government in an actually functioning democracy.
Hislop replied to Jenkin:
… I sat through the entire proceedings of Leveson in which one of the main points was the closeness of the relationship between senior members of the Conservative Party and Mr Murdoch.
Mr Gove’s had a number of meetings with him (Murdoch) when he was in various departments so I think there is a question there about when you’re in office, which is what we’ve talked about, imagining a future when you might need the generosity of, say, Mr Murdoch to sustain your career and whether that would influence the decisions you’ve made
In his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, Gove gave a spittle-flecked endorsement of Murdoch — his once and future employer — calling him “a force of nature, a phenomenon, a great man.” He also brushed off the many, many dinners and private meeting he’d had with Murdoch, denying anything of real consequence was discussed. Gove doesn’t just like to stretch credulity, he likes to stamp on it until it shatters into a million pieces.
Also back in 2016, when Vine was a great deal more interested in getting involved in her soon-to-be ex-husband’s political career than her column last week suggested, an email written by her became public after she clumsily sent it to the wrong person. It further revealed Gove’s relationship with Murdoch.
It read in part:
… the membership will not have the necessary reassurance to back Boris, neither will [Daily Mail editor Paul] Dacre/[Rupert] Murdoch, who instinctively dislike Boris but trust your ability enough to support a Boris Gove ticket.
Gove’s return to being a hack was short-lived. In July 2017, he returned to the cabinet under Theresa May as Environment Secretary. Labour suggested at the time that Murdoch had put pressure on the Prime Minister to reappoint Gove. A letter from May’s deputy Damien Green to the then-deputy leader of the Labour Party Tom Watson avoided mentioning Murdoch — the Voldemort of press barons — by name.
Today’s Sunday Times touches on the Gove/Vine split only for a piece detailing the long history of Sarah Vine — herself an ex-Times journalist — writing about her marriage in The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.
While the headline suggests bite — How Michael Gove and Sarah Vine’s marriage turned from romance to rancour — the copy gums the topic harmlessly. One paragraph ludicrously suggests that:
Vine’s jolly tales may well have helped to humanise Gove, a fiercely clever individual whose “geeky ability to command a brief is such he could argue the moon is made of green cheese and win”, according to one newspaper profile.
Gove brings to mind Elizabeth Bowen’s dismissal of the young Aldous Huxley, he is “the stupid person’s idea of the clever person”. He has turned a journalist’s dilettante skill at appearing informed on a myriad of topics — in the shallowest way possible — into a career in politics and government where what he ‘reckons’ is mistaken for intellectual rigour.
No profile of Gove will ever beat the insight into inexorable rise provided by Stephen Collins’ cartoon:
![Stephen Collins on Twitter: "Only two copies left of my limited edition Michael Gove comic print: http://t.co/4IPhFino4N http://t.co/z9FD5s1Wou"](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd4c2dbd1-1e9b-41d0-addb-6363cdab8c34_598x263.png "Stephen Collins on Twitter: "Only two copies left of my limited edition Michael Gove comic print: http://t.co/4IPhFino4N http://t.co/z9FD5s1Wou"")
While The Sunday Times trails along in the gutter, pretending to be interested only in the stars, its sewer-dwelling sibling The Sun on Sunday avoid questions about Gove’s adherence to Covid rules — raised by his frenemies at The Daily Telegraph yesterday — in favour of reheating an old story about Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner and her private life.
The Sun’s story on the Gove/Vine split is little more than SEO-chasing (“Who is Michael Gove’s wife Sarah Vine?” reads one sub-head). Its Rayner story, however, gets a screaming Exclusive tag and a prime spot on its home page, pushed down only by extensive coverage of England’s win against Ukraine.
Headline 'TWO-FACED RAYNER' Angela Rayner quiet on nature of relationship with married MP despite slamming Matt Hancock over his affair the story is a tabloid classic — old ‘revelations’ reheated with a dash of new insinuations and timed to follow a rash of briefings against her by Keir Starmer’s office (or rather “people close to the Labour leader” as the usual formulation has it).
Without any actual evidence of wrongdoing on Rayner’s part and in the absence of a killer image to illustrate its story, The Sun simply resorts to putting a picture of her and Sam Tarry alongside a screengrab from the Hancock arse grab video. The implication is clear.
The story — which required three Sun hacks to write — goes on to say:
Her relationship with Mr Tarry, 38, grew after she split from her husband.
One Westminster source said they had been “working intensely” when he was given the job of improving campaigning for the party.
There is no suggestion of misuse of public money.
Mr Tarry refused to comment when asked about his relationship with Mrs Rayner. Last October a source would not comment on whether they were having an intimate relationship but said Tarry’s appointment was made before they got close.
In October, The Sun wrote largely the same story under the headline RAYN MAN Labour deputy Angela Rayner strikes up close friendship with married MP after split from husband. There’s no public interest in re-running the same gruel thin allegations but there is Keir… sorry… clear interest in attacking Rayner right now from both The Sun and the Labour leader’s camp.
The comparison between Hancock’s actions and what The Sun alleges is a relationship between Tarry and Rayner is that the first involves the use of public money and questions around the appointment of a ‘friend’ to provide oversight for the ministry Handsy Hancock was leading. The second is actually private.
Perhaps we should ask past-Sarah Vine what she thinks of present-Sarah Vine’s pleas for privacy at this difficult time:
If The Sun were, as its editor Victoria Newton boasted in The New Statesman this week, truly committed to “[holding] the powerful to account without fear or favour”, it would be spending less time on Angela Rayner’s domestic arrangements and more on those of Michael Gove, a minister whose choices may have involved breaches of the rules he was central in creating. But it’s not.
The Sun has ceased to be a moneymaker for Rupert Murdoch but it remains a cosh, a means of wielding power and influence. Michael Gove was a guest at Rupert Murdoch’s wedding1. Matt Hancock was not.
The Sun is not a watchdog, but an attack dog and its long-chain leads back to the hands of its proprietor. Newton knows just as well as the editors at The Sunday Times that Michael Gove is a “mate of Murdoch” so he gets a light touch. The Hancock story got the works because Rupert simply doesn’t care for him.
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Credit to the Reuters picture editor for the choice of image on this story about gove and Vine splitting. Read the caption.