Michael Gove edged closer to backing Boris Johnson in the Tory leadership race on Tuesday, but stopped short of an outright endorsement.
The environment secretary, who launched his own failed bid to succeed Theresa May, said on Tuesday that Johnson would be a “great” prime minister.
The two men, who led the successful Vote Leave campaign, had a dramatic falling out after Gove torpedoed Johnson’s 2016 leadership bid by entering the race himself.
At the time he said he had concluded Johnson was “not capable” of leading the party and country.
But now, with Johnson seen as all but certain to beat Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt in the contest, Gove has lavished praise on his former rival.
“I know they both would be great prime ministers and I want to affirm today that we can trust them both to do the right thing on every critical issue facing us and of course most critically on the environment,” he said in a speech this . morning.
In questions after the speech, Gove refused to be drawn on which of the two candidates he supported.
He said he would be happy to serve in government, whoever is the next prime minister, but added he understood if they sent him to the back benches.
During the earlier stage of this year’s race, Gove took multiple swipes at Johnson’s suitability for office including accusing him of hiding from press scrutiny his “bunker”.
Gove also dismissed Johnson’s pledge to take the UK out of the EU on October 31 without a deal.
“We all know what would happen then. There would be a vote of confidence in the House of Commons that the government would lose,” he said at the launch of his own leadership campaign in June.