Michael Gove is Brexit’s high priest of economic doublethink

The minister wants to risk people’s health to save the economy, while damaging business himself by pushing through our exit from the EU, writes James Moore

Doubleplus ungood: the government’s Orwellian princes of Brexit are fluent in both doublethink and Newspeak (Getty)

When it comes to doublethink, Michael Gove could teach O’Brien, the chief antagonist of George Orwell’s 1984, a thing or two.

One of the high priests of Brexit (which we’ll get to), the Cabinet Office minister spent his weekend muddying the government’s Covid advice by saying: “We want to see more people back at work on the shop floor, in the office, wherever they can be.”

Trouble is, the guidelines hold that if you can work from home you should do so, subject to the needs of the business you work for.

Gove is clearly worried about the impact on the economy of the suspension of the office commute. A lot businesses rely on it, and he’s not alone.

The latest figures from the British Retail Consortium released this morning underline that. Retail sales increased by 3.4 per cent in June but that’s the first growth since lockdown started, reflecting the release of pent-up demand, and was driven by online despite the reopening of non-essential shops.

However, over the three months to June, in-store sales of non-food items declined 46.8 per cent and retail footfall, while it is slowly improving, is running at barely half the level of a year ago.

So, the rationale goes, maybe we should roll the dice, even if that risks a second wave of infections because the prospects of a swift, V shaped, recovery are already looking shaky and all the more so the longer this goes on.

One thing that might help restore confidence is a more widespread adoption of masks. This didn’t appear to register with Gove, who said he didn’t think they should be compulsory and would prefer to trust the issue to people’s “basic good manners”. Even though his boss Boris Johnson has been muttering about tightening the rules and making them mandatory.

The cornerstone of doublethink is the holding of two apparently contradictory opinions at the same time. Worrying about the economy while opposing something that could help is far from the worst of GoveBrien’s indulging in it.

This brings us to the thing that is going to define his place as one of history’s great political villains: Brexit.

Despite the fact that last year’s patronising, £46m-plus “get ready for Brexit” campaign didn’t work, according to no less than the National Audit Office, the government is readying another one. “The UK’s new start – let’s get going.”

It’s been compared to another Orwellian concept: Newspeak. For those who haven’t read the book, that’s the brutal mangling of the English language cooked up by the ruling party to eliminate dissent and convince the public that 2 plus 2 can equal five and black is white when the party wants it that way.

The comparisons are just, because Britain’s sunny “new start” involves your mobile phone roaming charges soaring, the need for comprehensive travel insurance if you plan to cross the English Channel, and the necessity of visiting a vet four months in advance if you want to take your pet with you.

Businesses are going to have it even worse. Those relying on goods imported from the continent face the challenge of getting them out of a vast and stupendously pointless lorry park being put together at a cost of £705m. Those trying to export are going to face a similar challenge when their products arrive at the EU’s borders.

A survey by the Institute of Directors found that only a quarter of business leaders say their organisations are fully ready for the godawful mess GoveBrien and his friends are creating. They have only a matter of months to change that in the midst of a pandemic that has thousands of them understandably focused simply on survival.

This all supposes a best-case scenario in which the government pulls a rabbit from its hat and secures a trade deal at a time when there’s a growing likelihood of a no-deal crash-out, with the imposition of crippling WTO tariffs that will make British exports uncompetitive and deliver another brutal blow to an economy struggling against a hurricane-force coronavirus headwind.

Yes, GoveBrien and his chums are proposing to roll the dice and risk pandemic 2.0 because they’re scared of the economic consequences of not doing so while preparing to kick it in the teeth.

They’re enhancing Orwell’s reputation for prescience but that’s just about the only thing they’re going to leave better off.