Matthew d'Ancona: Michael Gove is now Chief Whip to the nation

Since entering Number 10 four years ago, David Cameron has repeatedly made clear his strategic distaste for sweeping reshuffles: he has preferred to leave senior ministers in post to fight their battles, legislate and implement their reforms. He genuinely (and correctly) believes that the annual game of musical chairs in Whitehall is a tradition useful for party management but hostile to good government. The sheer oddity of this exercise — the unfamiliar sight of Dave in butcher’s apron, grasping a bloody cleaver and mopping his brow — has triggered bemusement, bitterness and admiration in almost equal measure.

What, for instance, will Nicky Morgan do at the Department for Education? Too much of the mood music that accompanied her appointment suggested that she had been dispatched to sue for peace. I sincerely hope this is not the spirit in which the new Secretary of State has been sent forth by Cameron.

As George Osborne likes to say, Michael Gove attracted hostility for all the right reasons. As Education Secretary, he was unapologetically on the side of the pupil against the remarkably robust vested interests in the schools system that, borrowing US jargon, he called “the Blob”. There is a shameful history of Education Secretaries (Gillian Shephard, Estelle Morris) being sent in to appease teachers rather than to reform schools. Christine Blower, the general secretary of the NUT, said yesterday that the faces of teachers across the land were “wreathed in smiles” because of Gove’s departure. While retaining her civility, Morgan needs to wipe that smile away before term ends. She is not the soft-touch supply teacher sent in to replace the starchy, old-fashioned Mr Gove.

As for Gove himself, his new role really is sui generis. Technically, this is a demotion, from running a grand department to managing the Conservative Party in Parliament and the fate of Government legislation: it is a role for which he has no obvious predilection and for which he has never, to my knowledge, expressed ambition. Whether or not it was Lynton Crosby, Cameron’s election strategist, who wielded the cosh — as many of Gove’s supporters believe — polling data revealing hostility towards him certainly played its part in the move.

This is the most depressing aspect of the whole saga. Imagine if Margaret Thatcher’s privatisations had required the green light of opinion polls — our utilities would still be nationalised. I find it immensely reassuring that Gove’s determination was divisive: he was a policy revolutionary, not the nation’s therapist. The data that matter in this case are those related to the oversubscription of free schools and academies.

Timorously, however, the party’s strategists were not willing to take a risk: Gove’s move was driven by raw, immediate electoral calculation. But so too was his new role. The more one looks at this position the less it resembles the traditional job of the Chief Whip, and the more it looks like a bespoke job, tailored for Gove himself.

According to one source: “Dave will now have someone else around who is ready to say ‘no’.” Of the original trio which performed that role — Osborne, Steve Hilton and Andy Coulson — only the Chancellor remains. Gove is a natural fit for one of the two vacancies.

He will be around Downing Street all the time (Number 12 is the Chief Whip’s historic residence, although Number 9 is where his offices are now based). Though it will be his theoretical task, in tandem with the new Leader of the House, William Hague, to ensure that government business is expedited in the Commons, there is comparatively little contentious legislation to pass between now and Parliament’s dissolution on March 30, 2015. So he will be with the Prime Minister more than his predecessors.

The closest precedent is Edward Heath, Chief Whip from 1955 to 1959. Heath would often brief Eden, the latter recalled, “while I was shaving, bathing and dressing”. He was even closer to Macmillan, who became deeply dependent on his counsel as well as his parliamentary management.

Whether the new Chief Whip will talk to Cameron in the bath remains to be seen. But the parallels are clear. The PM was genuinely annoyed by Gove’s remarks published in March about the number of Etonians in the Cabinet. He sometimes finds his neo-con convictions too sharp. But all this is eclipsed by his admiration and affection for “Govie”. Even as he moved his friend Michael from a job he loved, he hugged him close: ruthlessness and sentimentality converged in a single decision.