2 Michael Gove THE TRUE BELIEVER Illustration by Jaya Nicely for POLITICO

Only a true Brexit believer like Michael Gove would ask to become Britain’s environment and agriculture secretary.

For decades, the job was one of the least important in the British government. After all, most environmental policy was decided in Brussels — making it a ministerial position with no real power.

But with the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, Gove’s portfolio puts him in a position to radically reshape the British landscape — literally.

Gove, 50, a man whom former Prime Minister David Cameron once described as “a bit of a Maoist,” made his name with a controversial overhaul of Britain’s education system that infuriated teachers.

Now, he has set his sights on the country’s agriculture policy, delighting left-wing environmentalists and alarming many Brexit-backing farmers with proposals that would redirect subsidies away from large landowners toward holdings that take measures — such as banning certain common types of pesticides — to improve biodiversity and soil fertility.

That Gove finds himself in a position to carry through with that ambition is a remarkable turnaround for a man who less than a year ago could open the morning paper and count on reading some version of his political obituary.

As the brains behind Brexit, the former Times of London columnist brought the intellectual ballast to then Mayor of London Boris Johnson’s celebrity stardust. His side’s victory in the 2016 referendum buoyed Gove’s prospects — until a calamitous run to succeed Cameron left him battered and wounded, exiled to the political wilderness.

“[His colleagues] now realize they need a reformer in the Treasury and a PM with more character, and they’ve got neither at the moment” — A close ally of Gove

In the battle for the top job following Cameron’s resignation, Gove first threw his weight behind Johnson, only to withdraw his support on the morning his ally was formally due to enter the race.

The stunning political assassination proved too bloody even for the Conservative Party and cemented Gove’s reputation as a Tory Brutus. Theresa May emerged as the winner, and Gove was dispatched to the backbenches. When the newly minted prime minister warned her Cabinet that “politics is not a game,” few doubted that he was among those foremost on her mind.

It was only after last summer’s general election, when a humiliated May needed to shore up her power by rebalancing the Cabinet, that Gove was admitted back into the heart of British power — having made it known his preferred place in government was crafting environmental policy.

Gove 2.0 is playing the game differently, his allies say, but his radicalism burns just as brightly. The environment secretary is a Tory, but he is no conservative. He has a portrait of Lenin in his office.

Despite being the godfather to one of Cameron’s children, he felt so passionate about leaving the EU that he campaigned against his old friend during the referendum — a decision that ultimately deprived the prime minister of his job and certainly any fond feelings he had for Gove. The two men no longer speak.

Despite May’s pointed criticism, Gove could not be further from the popular caricature of a top Tory: an amateur gentleman treating politics as an amusing game.

The roots of his politics run deep. Gove was adopted when he was just four months old; his birth mother — a young, unmarried student in Edinburgh who called him Graham — was unable to cope.

He was renamed Michael by his adoptive parents, Ernest and Christine, a working-class couple from Aberdeen who could not have children themselves. Gove admits to thinking about his adoption often. “I wonder what my birth mother thinks,” he once told an interviewer, in what some saw as a message for her to reach out without hurting his adoptive parents, whom he holds dear. “The people who brought me up are my mum and dad,” he said.

His father ran a fish-sorting business in Aberdeen, but sold it amid the general decline in the British fishing industry — something Gove would later blame on Brussels. During the referendum campaign, he described the EU as a “job-destroying machine” that caused misery to communities it had “hollowed out.”

In the debate raging in government between the “hard” and “soft” Brexiteers, there’s no doubting on which side Gove has planted his flag. Around the Cabinet table, he has reportedly called for weekly updates on the preparations for a “no-deal” scenario with the EU and sided with Johnson against Treasury attempts to tie Britain close to Brussels’ economic model after Brexit. He is also pushing for a speedy repatriation of Britain’s fishing grounds.

Gove’s vision for Britain after Brexit and his intellectual force in government have sparked rumors that he is being lined up to take over from Philip Hammond as chancellor of the exchequer.

“Everyone is correcting for mistakes of the past,” says one close ally. “Whatever his colleagues think of him, they respect his intellect. Many of them now realize they need a reformer in the Treasury and a PM with more character, and they’ve got neither at the moment.”

What’s clear is that Gove is back in the game. “He’s a force again, but his big impact might come later,” his ally says. “He is the kingmaker for the next PM.” May will be watching him carefully.

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