A Brexit statement from the Govester serves to underline that he has no sense of shame
It made a change to have a break from the horrors of the coronavirus. Even if it was for only an hour. The downside was that we got the horrors of Michael Gove giving a Commons statement on Brexit instead. And like almost all of the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster’s performances, it was conducted entirely without sincerity.
At least with Boris Johnson you get the feeling that his past is catching up with him and his untruths are beginning to take their toll on his physical and mental wellbeing. Gove appears to have no vestigial sense of shame. Politics for him is just a theatre in which truth and lies are interchangeable, and he retains an outward appearance where excessive politeness is merely a front for outright contempt. He is the original tabula rasa: every day – or even several times a day – he is the chameleon that reinterprets himself according to his surroundings. His mistakes are not merely forgiven, they are erased from memory.
