Michael Gove has said personal attacks on his ex-wife Sarah Vine were the thing that “really hurt most” during his political career.
He said Ms Vine, who is a columnist for the Daily Mail, was “portrayed as a sort of Lady Macbeth figure” when he was weighing up lending his support to Boris Johnson in his bid to become Tory leader after the 2016 Brexit vote.
The former cabinet minister said the “fact she was attacked in that way at a time of turmoil overall was incredibly hurtful”.
In his new BBC series, ‘Surviving Politics with Michael Gove’, the former levelling up secretary interviewed Labour spin doctor Peter Mandelson.
Mr Gove, who is now the editor of the Spectator magazine, asked Lord Mandelson what advice he would give new Labour MPs who have entered parliament following the party’s landslide general election victory.
“Be very clear what you believe in, what your convictions are, what your project is and what you want to achieve,” the former Labour cabinet minister responded.
He then asked Mr Gove: “All sorts of things have happened to you in the course of your political career. If you had to identify one really personal thing that hurt, what was that?”
Mr Gove referenced an incident in 2016 when Ms Vine accidentally sent a private email intended for him and a number of advisors to a member of the public, who subsequently leaked it to the press.
Mr Vine advised her husband to hold back his support for Mr Johnson until he had specific guarantees about a Cabinet job.
Just two days later, Mr Johnson withdrew from the race after Mr Gove put in a surprise bid to lead the party.
Rejecting the comparison to Lady Macbeth, Gove said his ex-wife, “whom I still love very much”, is “a strong woman”.
Mr Gove said: “It’s always fine if you’re being attacked on ground where you think, yeah, I’m happy to defend myself.
“But when it’s a misunderstanding and a misunderstanding that affects someone close to you, that’s particularly difficult.”
He added: “It’s when people seek to construct a narrative and they draw someone else in and that person is collateral damage in an attack on you. It hurts so much.”
Mr Gove, who had served as the MP for Surrey Heath since 2005, stepped down ahead of the last general election.
Lord Mandelson told the former education secretary that he saw “an echo of that in my own life, with my own partner, now husband, when they went for him and they did”.
“I didn’t even think I could necessarily enter Parliament because I was gay”, he said.
Speaking about the fact that he lived openly with his partner, Lord Mandelson said he was told: “you’re going to find it very difficult to be selected.”
He said he was “targeted viciously” by the media in the 1987 election, the first campaign he directed.