How can I encapsulate the decline of the west? Libraries of books have been written on populism. Learned men and women have agonised over the eagerness to believe lies are true and the truth an elitist conspiracy. Surely a paltry newspaper column cannot begin to compete. Fortunately for journalists, if not for this luckless country, self-harming mendacity, institutionalised deceit and manufactured paranoia can be condensed down to the pimple-shaped figure of Michael Gove.

To further his career, he has made a nonsense of the ideas he pretends to believe in, and projects the vices he cannot admit to possessing on to those who challenge him. Writing of the pornographic tradition in western art, John Berger described the projection of artists who “painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure”.

The pornographic tradition in western politics is no different. The dirty trickster accuses his critics of practising the dirty tricks he so enjoys and thus justifies pulling more tricks to counter them. In an interview with Channel 4 News, the reporter asked straight questions about the fake fact-checking account Gove’s Conservative party had set up, the propaganda from Gove’s Vote Leave that the EU was preparing to ban kettles, Gove’s willingness to condemn Boris Johnson as unfit to be prime minister in 2016 and serve under him in 2019, and his declaration that Leavers “didn’t vote to leave without a deal” he duly contradicted with a later threat to take Britain out without a deal.

You are making a “polemical leftwing case”, cried the man who can only make a rightwing case. How do I know you haven’t rigged your computer to show me fake news? asked the man whose party had just rigged a fake news feed. The mere act of asking questions became evidence of a disabling bias. The political usefulness of Gove’s self-justification was as striking as his absence of self-knowledge. It allowed the Conservatives to use any tactic to fight such unscrupulous media opponents.

For, and here we come to the central assumption of modern political discourse, Gove believed no one except the corrupted advocate of malign interests would question him. “What are we supposed to do?” asked Channel 4’s Ciaran Jenkins, if we cannot question you on your own statements. Well, Ciaran, you’re meant to be a good boy and suck it up was Gove’s implicit reply.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michael Gove and Boris Johnson address the nation after the results of the 2016 referendum were announced. Photograph: Mary Turner/Getty Images

Unlike the other architects of Brexit, Gove gets an easy ride. He affects a courteous manner. He reads books, and may even have finished a couple, and perhaps that’s why critics back away. His answer to the question why the public should trust him after his many deceits is that as education secretary in the Cameron government he had promised to raise educational standards and as a result 1.9 million children went to good or outstanding schools.

Yet history will remember Michael Gove, assuming it remembers him at all, for his Trump-era defining statement: “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts.”

He disparaged the results of a good or outstanding education for the same reason he disparages the hard questions of an open society: education, expertise, a free press must be disparaged if they pose the tiniest threat to the fatuous nationalist adventure he and his comrades have manacled their party and country to.

It’s not just the projection of his own manipulativeness on to others: Gove’s internal contradictions would keep a halfway competent shrink in work for years. The man who promotes education raises the mob against the educated. The national security conservative, who in his time was a neocon who fretted about the decline of the west, is now a clear and present danger to the nation’s security in ways that are worth taking a moment to understand.

You can see why Gove and Johnson are so keen to sell the line that they will “get Brexit done” and “take back control” in a matter of months. They must pretend it will be easy to take the UK out of the EU in January and then negotiate a trade deal with Brussels by the end of 2020. While we wait for the negotiations to end, Britain will be subject to EU rules, pay the EU money and accept the free movement of EU citizens to Britain and vice versa. It will seem as if there is no point in leaving.

The Conservatives could get over this embarrassment by striking a quick deal if they promise to abide by EU regulations on workers’ rights, the environment and trade standards, and allow EU fishing fleets to carry on as before. But they say they won’t because, once again, what would be the point of Brexit? A hard-fought deal will take years to negotiate, during which we will be subject to EU rules, free movement and budgetary demands. You get the point. There is no point and the electorate cannot realise that before 12 December.

Britain’s sole diplomatic advantage is that it is a European military power. It can use the continent’s security as a negotiating card. Don’t think Gove’s previous belief in national defence would restrain him. Brexit furthers Russian foreign policy objectives by weakening Britain and Europe, which is why, I suspect, the government has suppressed the report into Russian influence in the referendum. Do not imagine the supposedly patriotic Gove sees that contradiction either. If he tried to resolve his contradictions, he would fall apart.

Fair-minded readers will say that a description of Gove’s deceitful manoeuvres applies as well to Corbyn’s politics, Trump’s politics, Orbán’s politics and Bolsonaro’s politics. Why pick on this little guy? My reply is that Gove’s redeeming virtue is that he is a one-stop shop, where you can find all that is tricky and tacky 24/7 in one convenient store.

• Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist