A self-deprecating Gove has taken to the dispatch box for the first time as Secretary of State for Levelling Up. His opposite Labour shadow minister opened the session joking how she hadn’t seen Gove torpedo something as quickly as the Government’s developers’ charter since his 2016 leadership bid. Gove quipped back:

“I’m grateful to the hon. lady for taking me back to the halcyon days of 2016. It wasn’t so much a torpedo being launched as an unexploded bomb going off in my own hands.

As the former member for Kensington & Chelsea, Sir Malcolm Rifkind pointed out, one of the things about committing political suicide is you always live to regret it!”

On the slightly more serious and substantial point of the government’s planning reforms, Gove promises the proposals have a number of good ideas which are merely being revisited to make even better…