He terminated the previous Labour government's Building Schools for the Future programme, reformed A-Level and GCSE qualifications in favour of final examinations, and responded to the Trojan Horse scandal.

Upon the appointment of May as prime minister, Gove was dismissed from the Cabinet but joined the second May government as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs following the 2017 general election.

[8] Gove, his parents, and his adoptive sister Angela Christine lived in a small property in the Kittybrewster area of Aberdeen,[9] before relocating to Rosehill Drive.

[29] Struggling to maintain his career in London,[30] he moved back to Aberdeen and became a trainee reporter at The Press and Journal, where he spent several months on strike in the 1989–1990 dispute over union recognition and representation.

[34] After moving to national television in 1991, Gove worked for the BBC's On the Record,[33] and the Channel 4 current affairs programme A Stab in the Dark, alongside David Baddiel and Tracey MacLeod.

[38] Gove was a member of the winning team in Grampian Television's quiz show Top Club,[40] and played the school chaplain in the 1994 family comedy A Feast at Midnight.

He was on good terms with the owner of the paper, Rupert Murdoch,[44][45] whom Gove described in evidence before the Leveson Inquiry as "one of the most impressive and significant figures of the last 50 years".

[18][47][48] During his period at The Times he also broadcast regularly, on programmes including Any Questions?, The Week in Westminster, The Book Quiz, Moral Maze and Newsnight Review (all on the BBC).

[43] Prior to the 2010 general election, most of his questions in Commons debates concerned children, schools and families, education, local government, Council Tax, foreign affairs and the environment.

His first moves included reorganising his department,[68] announcing plans to allow schools rated as Outstanding by Ofsted to become academies,[69] and cutting the previous government's school-building programme.

[92] Gove told BBC News that he had mixed emotions about starting the new role, saying it was a privilege to become Chief Whip but that leaving the Department for Education was "a wrench".

[118] The Telegraph wrote in an opinion piece that Gove's actions in undermining Johnson's leadership aspirations constituted "the most spectacular political assassination in a generation"[119] while The Guardian labelled it as a "Machiavellian move".

[126] In the aftermath of the EU referendum, Gove was accused by Nick Clegg of being the source of a claim by The Sun that Queen Elizabeth II made comments supportive of Brexit in a private lunch at Windsor Castle.

[131] As well as attending meetings of the newspaper's politics team, Gove was dispatched to the United States[132] to report on campaign rallies in the upcoming presidential election.

He said that the ban would take effect by 2040 and end the sales of new fuel combustion cars, trucks, vans, and buses that have petrol and diesel engines in the UK.

[145] He was praised by Greenpeace UK executive director John Sauven for his strong stance on issues like bee-harming pesticides, single-use plastic and the future of the internal combustion engine", adding "Gove has defied many people's expectations on the environment".

Concerns were also raised about the selection process for the job, which was overseen by Sir Ian Cheshire, the chairman of Goldsmith's investment firm, Menhaden Capital Management.

[154] May offered Gove the post of secretary of state for exiting the European Union after Dominic Raab's resignation over the Brexit withdrawal agreement in November 2018.

[158] The speech, which gained significant media attention, attacked Corbyn for his foreign policy record, with Tom Rogan of the Washington Examiner describing it as "A tour de force.

[173] His non-portfolio role included responsibility for no-deal Brexit preparations, overseeing constitutional affairs, maintaining the integrity of the Union and having oversight over all Cabinet Office policy.

[188] On 13 February 2020, he took on additional responsibilities as Minister for the Cabinet Office, succeeding Oliver Dowden, who had been appointed Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in Johnson's first large reshuffle of his government.

[192] In May 2020, Gove was criticised[193] after his wife Sarah Vine shared a bookcase picture "as a very special treat for my trolls" which featured a book by the Holocaust denier David Irving, and a copy of The Bell Curve, which controversially claims that intelligence is highly heritable and that median IQ varies among races.

[206] In May 2021, Gove attended the 2021 Champions League Final in Porto with his son, supporting Chelsea; following his visit he was alerted by the NHS Test and Trace system of his potential exposure to the disease, and that he would need to self-isolate.

[207][208] In a case brought to the High Court of Justice by the Good Law Project in June 2021, Gove was found to have acted unlawfully when the Government awarded a COVID-19 contract without a tender to a polling company owned by long-term associates of his and Dominic Cummings, then Johnson's chief adviser.

In particular, Lynn identified Gove's resistance to new skyscrapers in London, his changes to the rules concerning the rental sector to make it harder for landlords to evict tenants, and his opposition to a fracking trial as damaging the economic growth prospects for the UK.

[233] Following the election of Liz Truss, Gove variously backed and criticised the prime minister on Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng's controversial reforms to taxation.

[237] On 25 October 2022, following the accession of Rishi Sunak to the prime ministership, Gove was reinstated to his previous roles of Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations.

[241] In 2023 the New Statesman named Gove as the sixth-most-powerful right-wing figure in the UK, describing him as a "great survivor" and retaining extensive influence over the potential future leaders of the Conservative Party, even as he "hints" at quasi-retirement.

[248] Defunct Gove is generally considered as combining socially liberal views—for example, on gay marriage[249]—with a harder Eurosceptic and neoconservative position on foreign affairs.

[253] In 2019, he reiterated "One thing I have always been since I was a boy is a Zionist" and spoke of his desire to "celebrate everything that Israel and the Jewish people have brought to the life of this world and hold it dear to our hearts" and that "For as long as I have breath in my body and a platform on which to argue I shall be on your side, by your side and delighted and honoured to argue, powerfully I hope, on behalf of people who have contributed so powerfully to the life of this nation".