What if Theresa May had kept Johnson out and brought Gove in?

Boris Johnson was surprised and grateful when Theresa May asked him to be foreign secretary five years ago. He thought his ambitions had suffered a serious and possibly terminal reverse when Michael Gove, his Leave campaign ally, sabotaged his leadership campaign on its launch pad.

Johnson had not given up – in fact, Gove’s betrayal made him more determined and more disciplined – but he thought the route to the top would have to start again from square one, another long and hazardous slog from the backbenches.

Instead, he was in the cabinet, in one of the great offices of state. He wasn’t very good at being foreign secretary, but it gave him a platform, it made it easier to build up a following among Conservative MPs, and it gave him a position to resign from at a well-timed moment. Thus easing his passage to the succession when May gave up the unequal struggle three years later.

But what if May had kept him out of her new government? Would history have turned out differently? It made sense for May to bring him in, of course. As a Remainer, she was not trusted by the Leaver majority of Tory MPs, so she had to surround herself with Brexiteers. He was one of three in central posts, along with David Davis as Brexit secretary and Liam Fox as international trade secretary. Andrea Leadsom, whose withdrawal from the leadership race pushed May into No 10 a few weeks early, was down the pecking order at environment, along with Priti Patel at international development.

There was no room at the top table for Gove, on account of his feud with May when he was education secretary and she was at the Home Office. Most can’t even remember the details (they rowed over Islamist radicalisation in schools), but it mattered greatly to them both, and particularly to May’s adviser Fiona Hill, who was sacked because of it in 2014 and brought back as joint chief of staff when May became prime minister.

Given that May felt strong enough to exclude one prominent Leaver from her cabinet, however, what if she had made her peace with Gove and left Johnson on the backbenches? She probably would not have made Gove foreign secretary – his enthusiasm for military intervention would have made that difficult – but he could have been home secretary and Amber Rudd could have been sent off to shake hands (we did that in those days) in foreign capitals.

It is possible that this would have weakened Johnson – and strengthened Gove – enough to change the outcome of the 2019 leadership election. Because we remember the ends of things, we tend to recall that as a contest between Johnson and Jeremy Hunt. In reality, the decisive moment was the fifth ballot of MPs, when Gove, in second place to Johnson, was overtaken by Hunt by just two votes.

That is why I for one am looking forward to Gavin Williamson’s memoirs: as the spider-owning organiser of the Johnson campaign, it was assumed that he arranged for a handful of Johnson supporters to switch to Hunt, to ensure that Johnson faced the weaker candidate in the final vote of party members.

If, when May fell, Johnson had spent the whole of the previous three years on the backbenches, while Gove had been in government offering a constructive but true-Brexiteer critique of May’s attempts to secure a withdrawal agreement, the balance of power might have been different. As it was, Gove had been brought back, as environment secretary, after May’s election humiliation. As ever, he proved to be an able minister, and made his mark on green issues, but if he had been given a more senior post earlier, he could have established himself as the pre-eminent mainstream Brexiteer.

Johnson would have worked hard as a backbencher to build up a following among Tory MPs – as indeed he did as foreign secretary, often making slow progress, an imperial durbar, through Portcullis House, the modern annexe of MPs’ offices opposite Big Ben. But it could have been difficult: by folding his tent so quickly when Gove challenged him in 2016, Johnson risked being seen as a marginal and quixotic politician, even if he did retain a national profile and popularity.

If Gove had won the leadership in 2019, it might be that Brexit would have turned out the same. He might have had Dominic Cummings work for him as prime minister – Cummings’s first Whitehall job was with Gove at education – and he might have forced Jo Swinson and Jeremy Corbyn to let him fight a “Get Brexit Done” election. Who can say?

But I do wonder if Gove, with his grip and his attention to detail, might have handled coronavirus better than the successor that Theresa May inadvertently promoted.