I can’t see Gove helping them any at the polling station. Who the hell would vote for that thing?
My guess is Sunak as strategically he may actually play in the crucial ‘red wall’ seats as he may be able to persuade Asian small business owners etc (assuming Hancock & Johnson haven’t killed their families with their covid 19 incompetence). If he pitches a couple of very small business-friendly budgets his stock could go up. Of all of them he is also the one least stained so far by the whole covid 19 mishandling; he’s helped people survive financially with “socialist” hand-outs rather than lie about turning carehomes into toxic death-camps, bunging multi-£million contracts to his mates etc with the rest of them. He is relatively clean so far.
As ever the UK electoral system is rigged and stacked. It means parties often have to make highly strategic choices as they don’t need to worry about their core votes, only the undecideds and their locations on the map. Institutional Tory voters would vote for an Asian guy as they’d vote for a housebrick with a blue rosette, just as institutional Labour voters will vote for a Blair equivalent. I don’t see how Gove would be attractive in the ‘red wall’ area at all. That is where they need to keep, and Johnson won that with Brexit and pandering to white racists alone. That and Arron Banks paying a lot of money to split-off the remaining Labour racist vote and throw it away. It amazes me how many ‘red wall’ seats fell by less than 2/3rds of the Brexit Party vote and it disappoints me that so few commentators have picked up on this point. It was election rigging IMHO. A party standing for no other reason than to split a vote in certain seats. No manifesto, no published accounts, no membership etc. Just a vote splitting scam paid for by a billionaire.
The goalposts will likely be in a different place next time.
