Five things you need to know about Theresa May's row with Michael Gove

Photo: PA

1. Theresa May is desperate to be the next leader of the Conservative Party. She knows that her best chance of achieving this will be if Labour wins the next general election and David Cameron resigns. In that scenario, she'll have no serious rivals, a point underlined by yesterday's poll in ConservativeHome showing her as the clear front runner. That explains why she has absolutely no qualms about aggressively briefing against Michael Gove this morning in spite of the fact that it torpedoed Downing Street's hopes of getting some good PR from today's Queen's Speech and comes on the eve of a critical by-election.

2. May's side will claim that Gove started this by briefing against Charles Farr, the former intelligence chief who now runs the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism in the Home Office. As Benedict Brogan points out, Gove has been particularly critical of Farr and it looks as if Farr is being lined up to take the fall when Ofsted publishes its highly critical report about the "Trojan Horse" affair next week. Clearly, May would rather it was one of Gove's senior officials who took the fall.

3. Charles Farr is the boyfriend of Fiona Cunningham, one of May's Special Advisors and the brains behind May's leadership bid. Team Gove may have reasoned that because of this, Team May would have been inhibited about defending him. If so, they miscalculated.

4. Team Gove is in fact Team Osborne. Gove isn't on manoeuvres himself. Rather, he's acting as an agent of George Osborne, who rightly perceives May as his main rival for the leadership. May probably regards the various inquiries going on into the "Trojan Horse" affair as a way of undermining her credibility as a leadership candidate – part of a larger plot to discredit her by highlighting the Home Office's catalogue of failures when it comes to all things Islamic. And she's probably right.

5. Ultimately, May's attack on Gove this morning is her way of threatening the Prime Minister. David Cameron made it clear which side he's on when he approved the appointment of anti-terror chief Peter Clarke to look into the different Muslim groups behind the "Trojan Horse" affair, rather than trust Charles Farr to carry out this inquiry. The fact that May was willing to create an almighty row about this on today of all days, giving Cameron a massive headache, is her way of sending him a message. That message is: Stay out of this, Prime Minister. If you take sides again in my battle with Osborne I'll do whatever I can to disrupt your strategy to win the next election. You already know it's in my interests for you to lose, so don't push me.

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