IN a world of discombobulating change and chaos, it’s nice to know there’s at least one constant, one ever reliable phenomenon that’ll never let you down. Yes, we can always rely on Michael Gove being a smarmy git.

As regular readers and a small team of psychiatrists will know, I am obsessed by the Govester. Perhaps I see something of myself in him (according to one psychiatrist, since fired). Perhaps I see something of Scotland in him. Perhaps I see something of ancient Rome in him, the ruthless backstabbing and jockeying for power.

Perhaps it’s just his swotty face that irks me, the thick lips ready to suck the life out of any situation, the big unblinking eyes sizing up potential advantages, the ears just sitting there, cunningly placed on each side of his head so that he can hear what’s going on.

This is disgraceful. And it is unworthy of you, the reader, to be entertaining such thoughts. It falls to me to bring some perspective to this discussion, which arises after a week in which the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, for such is the Goveling’s official title, addressed the House of Commons.

However, he wasn’t updating that august body of infants on the general situation vis-a-vis Lancaster, fine town though that is. He was addressing the representative rabble in his capacity as minister in charge of No Deal planning. He’s planning for something we’re told isn’t going to happen.

Still, at least some MPs turned up to hear him, what with Parliament having been brought back so that it could mostly sit empty after some pointless and embarrassing shouting about Brexit.

Leading Labour knight Sir Keir Starmer complained: “The Prime Minister should be here.” But Boris Johnson was busy answering questions about pole-dancing, and clutching his head in his hands after his stupid dad went out protesting with the crusties.

Say what you like about Boris, it was a classic piece of Roman-style statecraft for the top classicist to give a job to the man who had so brutally stabbed him in the back previously. “Et tu, Gove, can have an officium in the cabinetus.” Keep your friends close and your Goves closer, as they say.

In the Commons, Gove’s performance attracted the attention of sketch writers, who compared him to “an Edwardian butler” and a “high vizier”. And they weren’t just taking the Michael. Even in the chamber itself, Labour’s Hilary Benn praised his “beguiling manner”, which normally one would liken to that of Grima Wormtongue in – as you know – The Lord of the Rings.

The sketch writers referenced his “composure”, “stately charm” and “extravagant courtesy”, for example replying to one critic: “I am grateful, as ever, for the thoughtful tone in which the right honourable gentleman asks his questions”.

He has mastered the mannerisms and morés required of a gentleman in the English Parliament. For it is easy – and tempting – to forget that Michael is technically, if not patriotically (despite what he says; “proud Scot but” etc), Scottish.

Evidence of this sad condition is provided in a new biography, Michael Gove: A Man in a Hurry by Owen Bennett, which quotes former associates saying the quondam Scot – who opposed the Good Friday Agreement, comparing it to appeasement of the Nazis – was a strong supporter of Ulster Protestantism and fond of singing The Sash.

When I first read this in the papers, I was so shocked I couldn’t write about it, perhaps because psychologically, deep down, I harbour a great affection for Mr Gove. But, certainly, I’ve no time for that sort of thing and believe the only good reason for a man to wear a sash is if he believes he has a chance of becoming Miss World.

The point about Mr Gove is that he sashays around the House of Commons with a purpose, holding forth in pseudo-English vowels because he’s incurably ambitious and wants, one day, to run the country.

By all accounts, he didn’t do his devious plans any harm with his performance in the House this week, and that’s a cause for concern. For, hard though it is for some of you to believe, there are worse Tories than Boris out there.

**************

DECENT ratepayers whose hobby is charting the decline of civilisation monitor the Swedish situation as a key indicator. The world’s most politically correct country, which recently tried to ban the teaching of its own history in schools, rocked the royal world when its king, Carl XVI Gustaf, handed five of his grandchildren their jotters.

That is to say, they were no longer to have the title of “royal highness” but would become private citizens. The purpose was to get them off the public payroll, and the move has been seen as another sign that the modern royal is now a communist: vide Princes Harry and William here.

Indeed, European monarchy’s self-extinction project continues apace and, needless to say, speculation has arisen in Britain that the Von Windsor family might follow suit. Already, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have announced that their son, Archie, will not take a royal title as they want him to be “free” when he grows up.

Which is all very well, but the Royal Family didn’t survive all these centuries by banding around dangerous concepts like freedom. Ironically, the spread of republicanism among Europe’s royals could see these institutions ended by their own silken hands.

***********

HERALD readers and other top influential people will have been following the imbroglio between Wags (wives and girlfriends of footballers). I have no wish to discuss the subject in depth here. Instead, I shall provide a shallow analysis of the crisis.

The situation is as follows: Mrs Coleen Rooney, wife of Wayne of that ilk, wanted to know who was leaking tales from her private Instagram account to the nutter press. In a detective operation earning her the nickname Wagatha Christie, Coleen blocked all her followers barring one.

Then she filled the account with fake news, which duly found its way to the press, seemingly of course from the account of one follower: Mrs Rebekah Vardy, wife of Leicester City’s Jamie.

Rebekah denies this, and says it’s pointless arguing with Coleen as she’s like a pigeon: “You can tell it that you’re right and it is wrong, but it’s still going to s*** in your hair.”

What a to-doo! Certainly, Rebekah has a way with words. She once compared singer Peter Andre’s copulatory apparatus to “a miniature chipolata”.

No one knows, though, why she’d leak stories to the press. Certainly not for money. Perhaps she just has a chipolata on her shoulder.

**********

AW, as it were, naw. More evidence has emerged to show that there may be another planet just like ours somewhere out there in yon universe.

This is grim news indeed. Imagine two Earths, two dumbo-ruled, war-ridden, polluted planetary loony bins. Of course, they may not be like us in all respects.

Perhaps they’ll have tentacles where we have chipolatas. Perhaps they never took to clothes and just gad about with their heids sticking through the bottom of cardboard boxes. Perhaps their bottoms are where their heids should be. Perhaps their currency is made of guano. Perhaps they don’t have fitba’, just a form of tennis with the balls fired from bazookas.

But, in all other respects, if their planetary environment has evolved the same way ours has – hot, cauld, hot, blootered by meteors, cauld, hot, brink of extinction etc – they ought to be just like us but with worse B.O.

Some poltroon mentioned “evidence” earlier but the word was deployed cavalierly. The alien life theory only made the headlines because it was a claim by Sir John Sawers, the former head of MI6. But I think he was just talking off the top of his former head.

“Mind where you put your hand, officer.” This was just one of many leading intellectuals led away after disrupting the normal chaos of London life to bring a message of peace and harmony in the face of global rubbishness. Extinction Rebellion environ-mentalists hope to convert everyone to their cause by annoying them and polluting their environment with gridlocked traffic.