Michael Gove, the Tory chief whip and former education secretary, has urged his Tory colleagues to stop the “unfair” personal attacks on Ed Miliband which he believes could backfire with voters.
Gove told listeners to an LBC Radio phone-in that how Miliband munched a bacon sandwich – and his resemblance to Wallace out of Wallace and Gromit - were “irrelevant to his ability to be a good prime minister".
Gove, who has suffered from his own share of personal attacks in the past, continued: “I also know that Ed Miliband is (a) an intelligent person and (b) a sincere and thoughtful person. I also know in his personal dealings, he is decent, honourable and truthful.”
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While the Labour high command - not to mention his own colleagues - will be flabbergasted by Gove’s honesty, BBC political correspondent Iain Watson suggested on Radio 4’s Today programme that Gove had his own axe to grind about personal attacks.
Watson said “friends of Gove” blamed David Cameron's election guru Lynton Crosby for helping to engineer Gove’s removal from the Department of Education when his personal ratings showed him to be “toxic” with the school-run mums. He was replaced by the more voter-friendly Nicky Morgan and sent off to the relative obscurity of the whips’ office.
Will Gove now stand up for Nick Clegg? Tories in Sheffield, according to The Times, are gunning for the Lib Dem leader just as hard as they are for Miliband.
Yesterday a Survation poll, commissioned by the Unite union, gave Labour a ten-point lead over Clegg in his Sheffield Hallam seat, meaning the Lib Dems could lose their leader on 7 May.
But any idea that David Cameron might try to help his deputy PM survive have been scotched by local Tory candidate, Ian Walker. He said Clegg's character was an issue because voters believe he is "damaged goods".
"I don't want to decapitate the Liberals — I don't care about them — I just want to de-Clegg Sheffield," said Walker. Ouch.