Michael Gove has revealed he will become Lord Gove of Torry next month in a nod to his late adoptive father.
The former Conservative cabinet member is set to take the title in honour of the maritime area of Aberdeen where his father, Ernest, ran a fish-processing business.
Speaking to the Aberdeen Evening Express, Mr Gove said: ‘It’s really in memory of my dad who passed away in 2023. He meant everything to me. He was a wonderful man.
‘I’d love for my dad to be remembered just as he was; a hard worker, a good businessman and someone who always cared about other people, someone who always tried to give a start to people others didn’t see the potential in.’
Mr Gove, now 57, was born Graeme Andrew Logan in Aberdeen on August 26, 1967. He was taken in and then adopted by Ernest Gove and his wife, Christine, arriving with nothing but the clothes on his back.
He said: ‘I felt that I wanted to take the title particularly in honour of my dad but also in recognition of my parents.’
The retired politician, who is now editor of The Spectator magazine, said he had been adopted at four months old and would ‘never have been able to achieve anything in my life it it hadn’t been for [my parents’] love and kindness’.
Mr Gove stood down at the last election after 19 years as an MP, having held Cabinet positions including education secretary and helping to lead the Brexit campaign.
Mr Gove, now 57, was born Graeme Andrew Logan in Aberdeen on August 26, 1967
Michael Gove has revealed he will become Lord Gove of Torry when he gets his peerage next month in an ode to his late father and working-class background
Michael Gove takes part in a press conference about Brexit and the general election in London with then-prime minister Boris Johnson
He was brought up in Aberdeen and educated at two state schools – Sunnybank Primary School and Kittybrewster Primary School – before passing the entrance exam for the city’s fee-paying Robert Gordon’s College.
Having originally joined the Labour party in 1983, he got his first job in journalism with the Press and Journal after studying at Oxford University.
Asked what residents of Torry, a blue-collar community, would make of his title, he said, ‘I don’t know’.
‘Torry as a community has been resilient through thick and thin. One of the things I witnessed was the decline in the fishing trade there. I’m paying my respect to somewhere that’s very special.’
Names on Mr Sunak’s resignation honours list alongside Mr Gove include ex-chief whip Simon Hart and former Scottish secretary Sir Alistair Jack.
Former party chief executive Stephen Massey is also due to receive a peerage for ‘political and public service’. The list is a tradition that allows outgoing prime ministers to award gongs to close allies and staff.
In his separate dissolution honours list last summer, Mr Sunak gave a peerage to his chief of staff in Downing Street Liam Booth-Smith, along with former PM Theresa May, 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady and climate tsar Sir Alok Sharma. Mr Sunak vowed to scrap the House of Lords in favour of an elected upper chamber in 2022 but later watered down his plans.
Labour has pledged to introduce a mandatory retirement age of 80 alongside the abolition of hereditary peers, of which there are currently 90 in the House of Lords.
In December Sir Keir Starmer appointed 30 new Labour peers, including his former chief of staff Sue Gray.
