LEVELLING UP Secretary Michael Gove has revealed that he has apologised to Boris Johnson for running against him in the 2016 campaign to be Conservative Party leader.
Asked if he had patched things up with Mr Johnson, in a discussion during the Camilla Tominey show on GB News, he said: “I enjoyed working for Boris. We all know that Boris is a politician with massive gifts, but also he made some mistakes and we all know what happened as a result of that.
“I had the opportunity to talk to him at a social event a while ago but in fairness to Boris, he’s now a private citizen so it’s a private conversation.”
Asked if he had apologised, he said: “I think, a long time ago, yes.”
On regrets about standing against him, Mr Gove said: “I think that there have been so many turbulent toings and froings and that it’s probably best for historians to judge what was right and what was wrong rather than me.”
He went on to repeatedly refuse to say if he backs building the HS2 link to Manchester: “The first thing is work is still going on on HS2 even as we speak. The second thing is, you wouldn’t expect me to speculate…
“I think the most important thing is to make sure that we get value for money from every pound that we spend on transport. And critically, we need to make sure that as well as linking north and south we also link east and west.”
When it was suggested that the Government was not linking up east and west, Mr Gove responded: “I agree that we’ve been too London-centric in the past and that’s why we have a long term plan for levelling up…
“I think we need to make sure that we’re getting absolute value for money.
“I absolutely think the most important thing is making sure that when we level up, we take into account all of the things that we need to do…we’re going to have to look at every conceivable pound that we spend on in order to make sure that we get value for money.”
