The Brexit Hall of Lame: “Michael” The Govelin “Gove”

The Brexit Hall of Lame: “Michael” The Govelin “Gove”

Having covered Farage, the leader, and all the Prime Ministers, the Brexit Hall of Lame now turns to the seocnd tier, the true Number Twos of Brexit, starting with goblin in a man-suit “Michael” The Govelin “Gove.”

The Govelin first burst upon the world in an early DC Comics story called “The House Flippers.” In this initial outing for the smallest and yet one of the most devilish of all Batman villains, numerous members of Gotham City Council, otherwise known for advocating government cuts for public services and welfare, were jailed for illicitly trousering public money to fund their often bizarrely extravagant lifestyles. For his part, The Govelin claimed expenses for a house that was not in his ward, and then “flipped” his “second home,” also not in his ward, so that the citizens would stump up the $13,000 Stamp Duty. He also charged the citizenry $500 a night in for Hotel and Spa stays while moving between his houses, which were not in his ward, and spent another $7,000 on decorations by OKA, an interior design company owned by Viscountess Asda. In the final frames of the comic story, The Batman hurls all the thieving scoundrels over the walls and into the grounds of Blackgate Penitentiary to their pitiful cries of “BAH!”, “GNERK!”, and “OOF!”

By an amazing coincidence, Viscountess Asda was the aunt of another villain named “David” The Hameron “Cameron,” with whom The Govelin would become closely associated in later stories. The Hameron’s background had been previously sketched out in a story called “The Piggy Fiddler,” in which the hammy-skinned prince of pomposity was a member of a Secret Society whose members perform unspeakable acts on the carcasses of swine, pictures of which were unprintable even in the darkest of fantasy comic novels. In thrilling chase scenes that have become the stuff of legend, The Batman pursues The Hameron through the industrial wastelands of Gotham, until The Hameron trips and is hideously disfigured by falling face-first onto an arse mould in a mannequin factory. In the final frames, The Batman hurls The Hameron over the walls and into the grounds of Arhhan Asylum for the Criminally Insane to his pitiful cries of “BAH!”, “GNERK!”, and “OOF!”

In a later story we find that The Hameron has been released from the asylum and elected Mayor of Gotham, despite still being on the Sex Offenders Register, and that The Govelin has been released from Blackgate Penitentiary. In “The Child Catcher,” the now bum-faced seigneur of superciliousness is so impressed by The Govelin’s financial history and taste in interior decorators that he appoints the fiendish garden gnome as Gotham City Schools Inspector. The Govelin approached his portfolio gnomically observing that “there is good academia and bad academia” and saying that he wanted all schools to be above average. He said children need “a rooting in the basic scientific principles,” while gnomically attributing Lord Kelvin’s laws of thermodynamics to Isaac Newton. He criticized an “anti-knowledge culture” for undermining education, while approving Creationist schools, gnomically. The Govelin further aimed to modernize the Gotham schools’ curricula and exams by replacing them with ones from thirty years before. A hundred faculty at the Gotham School of Economics and Political Science criticized his “neo-Victorian” emphasis on rote learning over thinking, and on memory over understanding. The Head of the History Department described his curriculum reforms as a “ridiculous shopping list” of subjects and as “insulting and offensive” and “pedantic and utopian,” while the Head of Admissions said The Govelin’s policies would “wreck the Gotham education system.” Others attacked The Govelin’s “blinkered, almost messianic, self-belief, which appears to have continually ignored the expertise and wisdom of teachers, head-teachers, advisers and academics, whom he often claims to have consulted.” The Gotham Association of Head Teachers said that the villainous midget also created a “climate of bullying, fear and intimidation” and passed a vote of no confidence in him, as did the Gotham Union of Teachers, the Gotham Association of Teachers and Lecturers, and the Gotham Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers.

No one took any notice of these people, obviously, because their opinions were biased by knowledge and experience. Furthermore, The Govelin tried to dodge Freedom of Information requests by discussing public business with advisors using a private email account under the name of “Mrs. Blurt.” Commissioner Gordon granted a request that the emails be released to the Gotham Gazette anyway, but The Govelin had deleted them, for reasons of “good computer housekeeping.” Commissioner Gordon nonetheless accused the sprite of Satan of “abuse of power” for cutting city school funding without consultation in his “Demolishing Schools for the Future” initiative. The Govelin also accused a school builder of earning $1,000,000 in one year, which a Council investigation found to be “not quite true” on the grounds that it was $700,000, five people, and four years. The final frames show The Batman hurling the hideous imp of Hades over the walls and into the grounds of Blackgate Penitentiary to his pitiful cries of “BAH!”, “GNERK!”, and “OOF!”

The Govelin later featured in a story called “Legends of the Dark Right.” It began with his release from prison for “Abuse of Power” and immediate appointment by The Hameron as Chief Whip of the Conservative Party and then Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor. But The Hameron then concocted a Cunning Plan to marginalise The New Jersey Research Group and other Worldoskeptics by calling a referendum on Gotham’s independence. At this point The Govelin decided to betray his mentor and join forces with The Hameron’s life-long enemy, Boss Hogg-Johnson, the two together falsely promising wealth and freedom for Gotham but in fact plotting to use the economic chaos that would inevitably follow from separation as a pretext to sell off the city’s assets and keep the money for themselves. Opponents pointed out how separation would impoverish everyone except the very rich, but The Govelin said he was “tired of experts from organisations with acronyms saying they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong.” When accused of being against “all experts” he insisted he only meant experts “from organisations with acronyms saying they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong” because of course he did, of course, of course. Meanwhile, Boss Hogg-Johnson criticized all the business owners and academics, who warned that separation would be either terrible or disastrous, telling citizens that the Imperial City of Gotham could have its cake and eat it too, while shouting “Dang the Chamber of Commerce” and accusing all the professors at The Gotham School of Economics and Political Science of promoting “Project Poo Pants.”

The fiendish schemers finally over-reached themselves, however, when they claimed they would donate $350 million to Gotham General Hospital, a promise so blatantly false and cynical that all the citizens immediately realized they were being conned by two absolute Jokers and never again believed a single word either of them ever said. A Council investigation subsequently found that The Govelin’s and Boss Hogg-Johnson’s Vote Leavil campaign organization had spent more money than is legally permitted on Evil Plans, and also referred evidence to the Gotham City Police Department that Vote Leavil had “conspired to break the law” by funneling “huge sums” through another separatist group called BeLeavil, whose offices were in the same building. Commissioner Gordon declined to investigate further, however, because of what he called “political issues and sensitivities.” Nevertheless, despite endless abuse and threats, mostly from the Gotham Broadcasting Corporation, Gotham Observer journalist Carole Cad-Walloper eventually proved all of the above to be true, and also proved that masses of false information had been funded and planted on the GBC and other networks by a conspiracy including associates of slum-lord Frederick Anti-Christ Trump and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. The final frames show The Batman hurling The Govelin, Boss Hogg-Johnson, and a brillo-wigged fake journalist named Neil Andrew over the walls and into the grounds of Blackgate Penitentiary to their pitiful cries of “BAH!”, “GNERK!”, and “OOF!”

In a fourth and final story we find that The Govelin has been released after serving his third term in prison. In “The Govelin Returns,” the treacherous Thumbelina betrays his former ally by undermining Boss Hogg-Johnson’s candidature for Mayor of Gotham and then announcing his own. After coming third, behind a half-living skeleton and a zombie named Andrea Deadsome, Mayor Therebble Skeletor nevertheless appointed The Govelin as Gotham City Park-Keeper. The heinous munchkin of Beelzebub then permitted fracking directly under Gotham City, leading to geological instability, an increase in gas consumption, and a corresponding rise in city temperatures, which the pint-sized king of corruption then unconvincingly denied had anything to do with the recently founded Govelin Earthquake Repair Company, or the recently founded Govelin Energy Solutions, or the recently founded Govelin Ice Cream Emporium. The final frames show The Batman hurling The Govelin over the walls and into the grounds of Blackgate Penitentiary to his pitiful cries of “BAH!”, “GNERK!”, and “OOF!”

Sadly, however, a survey showed that DC Comic readers found The Govelin too ridiculous-looking to be convincingly evil and too stupid-looking to be a plausible genius, and he was thereafter dropped from Gotham City Rogue’s Gallery. Apart from these four stories, therefore, the only thing The Govelin is remembered for among comic book enthusiasts is as the one single character Bob Kane ever gave Bill Finger full credit for.

Angered and embittered at his rejection by the comic industry, The Govelin resolved to wreak vengeance on humanity by entering politics in the real world. He escaped from Blackgate Penitentiary by personally blocking one of the prison’s moveable toilets, and thereby being transported to the premises of Govelin’s Portaloo Repair Company, to which the pocket-sized devil-botherer had outsourced blockage servicing during his tenure as Gotham City Park-Keeper. The Govelin subsequently fled abroad by hiding himself among an export consignment of Chucky Dolls. He finally alighted in England, where he shortened his last name to “Gove” and adopted the first name “Michael,” after the Portaloo in which he’d escaped incarceration and about which he would later write a frankly rather weird book. He realized that in this eccentric country in which he was now exiled he could pass as a near-plausible-looking human being by fraternizing with such other marginal entities as pie-faced ham slices, zombies, Honey Monsters, sentient pencils, and Michael Fabricant. He realized as well that he could hide his wicked intentions through cultivating an image of harmless imbecility by simply imitating the nation’s famously sophisticated comedy traditions, such as haplessly falling on his arse in front of TV cameras and generally looking like one of the more gormless characters in The Night Garden. And he also began to realize that, in this implausible island nation, blinded by visions of a fantasy past, bewildered by delusions of imperial grandeur, beguiled by a mirage of future glory, he might finally realize his evil dream of promising unicorns and profiting massively from impoverishment and chaos….

“Michael” The Govelin “Gove,” Conservative MP for Surrey Heath.