The BBC has handed Michael Gove a podcast on ‘Surviving Politics’ just weeks after the former Conservative Cabinet minister was appointed editor of the Spectator Magazine.
After standing down as an MP at the 2024 general election, Gove has found himself to be eminently more employable than some of his less-fortunate Tory colleagues who lost their seats to a Labour landslide.
Alongside a cushty gig at The Spectator, Gove will also spend his time interviewing fellow veterans of the frontline in Surviving Politics with Michael Gove on Radio 4.
First up, Margaret Hodge will reflect on building bridges across party lines to do something about the scourge of tax avoidance.
The episode required her to quash her credo that she could never befriend a Conservative. “It’s easier to avoid Tories,” quipped Gove, “when you live in Islington.”
Then Peter Mandelson described the burden of being unpopular with his own party, and with Gordon Brown, in order to make it and Tony Blair electable.
“The schism was set in concrete at that moment,” he recalled, “and I was a meat in the sandwich to be very painfully squeezed by both.”
The series, available in slightly lengthened episodes on BBC Sounds, will conclude with Arlene Foster, per Telegraph reports, while The New European has asked why he was ever given a podcast in the first place.
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