On the anniversary of Lord Michael Gove taking up editorship of Britain’s oldest weekly magazine, it behoves us to ask the question: what the hell is he up to?

When the rising UK media magnate Sir Paul Marshall chose the former education secretary to edit The Spectator , it looked an inspired appointment. As a former leader writer for The Times who learnt how to detect a story on his home city’s paper, the Aberdeen Press and Journal, Gove is both a Conservative heavyweight and an experienced journalist.

Who better to lead the so-called house journal of the Tory party than Rishi Sunak’s former levelling-up secretary, someone with an unrivalled insider’s perspective on the formulation of Brexit and its fallout?

Yet Conservatives might look on Gove’s Spectator with bewilderment.

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