Michael Gove has joined the now record-breaking exodus of Conservative MPs quitting the Commons, with the levelling up secretary saying it was time for a “new generation” to lead the party.
Gove’s announcement in a letter tweeted on Friday evening had been anticipated by some given the strong Liberal Democrat challenge he faces in his Surrey Heath constituency, but adds to the sense of Tories fleeing in the face of a likely general election loss.
It puts the total number of sitting Tories saying they will not stand again at 77, beating the previous record of 72 from 1997.
An MP since 2005, Gove has been central to Tory fortunes ever since. He has also served as education secretary, justice secretary, environment secretary and chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.
In his letter, Gove wrote that he knew “the toll office can take, as do those closest to me”.
“No one in politics is a conscript. We are volunteers who willingly choose our fate. And the chance to serve is wonderful. But there comes a moment when you know that it is time to leave. That a new generation should lead,” he said.
Rishi Sunak’s sudden announcement of a 4 July election had already prompted a renewed rush of Conservatives saying they would step down, with the total hitting 70 by Wednesday evening.
Earlier on Friday three more MPs said they were going, among them the former cabinet ministers John Redwood and Greg Clark, both of whom represent home counties seats where the Liberal Democrats could beat the Tories.
The Conservatives also symbolically handed back the party whip to the former health secretary Matt Hancock and Bob Stewart – both of whom had already announced they were standing down – just before parliament was to be prorogued on Friday.
Also departing is Craig Mackinlay, who only returned to the Commons this week after nearly dying from sepsis and having his hands and feet amputated. The South Thanet MP said he had hoped to phase his return and could not commit to a campaign.
Sunak’s efforts to breathe life into the two-day-old campaign suffered another hiccup on Friday when a visit to Belfast’s Titanic Quarter brought comparisons with the liner’s sinking in 1912.
“We are just yards away from where the Titanic was built and designed,” a reporter from Belfast Live asked Sunak in a clip widely shared on social media. “Are you captaining a sinking ship going into this election?”
As Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary – among those not standing again – tried to suppress a smirk, Sunak launched into a heavily rehearsed answer about how “our plan is working”.
Adding to the difficulties, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, was chastised by the official statistics watchdog for claiming that taxes were falling.
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Robert Chote, the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, agreed with a Liberal Democrat argument that a cut in national insurance was more than offset by other factors, such as the freezing of tax thresholds.
The Titanic visit in particular is the latest in a series of unwelcome mishaps that have plagued the Conservative campaign, starting with the election being announced by an increasingly sodden Sunak in a rainy Downing Street with his words almost drowned out by Labour’s 1997 anthem Things Can Only Get Better, blasted out by a protester.
On Thursday, his first campaign stop was at a warehouse in Derbyshire, where staff in hi-vis jackets asked him questions. It later emerged that two of the questioners were actually Conservative councillors.
In a subsequent event, at a brewery in south Wales, Sunak’s attempt to make small talk by asking people if they were looking forward to Euro 2024 fell slightly flat after they pointed out that Wales had failed to qualify.
After the Titanic clip emerged, Ruth Davidson, the former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, expressed worry.
“The deluge launch drowned out by D:Ream,” she wrote on X. “A brewery visit with a teetotal PM, so no chance of a piss-up. Now a site visit to something famous for sinking. Is there a double agent in CCHQ, and were they a headline writer in a previous life? Our candidates deserve better.”
Sunak insisted to the small number of journalists on his plane from Belfast to his next stop in the West Midlands that he was enjoying the campaign and “up for the fight”.
He said: “I love doing this. I’ve been doing it since the beginning of the year, I’ve been out and about pretty much two, three days a week since the beginning of the year and I love it.
