BBC Online :Michael Gove has said his decision to stand to become Conservative leader is driven by “conviction” about what is right for the UK not personal ambition.The justice secretary said that when he concluded Boris Johnson was not the “right person”, his “heart told him” that he should put himself forward. Under his leadership, he said the UK would leave the EU’s single market and immigration would be reduced. But Mr Gove is facing calls to step down to ensure party unity.Sources have told the BBC ministers are urging Mr Gove to make way so the party can “unite” around Theresa May ahead of the first round of the contest next week. Launching his leadership bid, Mr Gove said he had done “everything he could” not to be a candidate, insisting that he had worked “day and night” to make Mr Johnson’s candidacy work. But despite Mr Johnson’s “formidable talents”, he had concluded that he could not take the UK down the “path of change” opened up by the Brexit vote, saying what was needed was “not to muddle through and make the best” but “embrace the change that people voted for”.”I am standing not as a result of calculation but because I have burning desire to transform this country,” he said. Mr Gove said he knew his own limitations but he had “a clear vision of what our future must look like” and had a track record to show he could deliver it. He pledged to end free movement rules by leaving the EU and investing at least £100m extra a week in the NHS by 2020. Ruling out a snap election if he became prime minister, he insisted the “best person” to take the UK out of the EU was someone who had argued for it during the referendum campaign. But he said he would not begin official talks with the EU over the UK’s exit, by triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, before the end of the 2016, saying “we control the timing and we will do it when we are good and ready”. He pledged to end free movement rules by leaving, to get immigration down, the EU and to invest at least £100m extra a week in the NHS by 2020.However, with the Conservative Party still in shock over Mr Gove’s decision to split with Mr Johnson, the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg said there was a strategy emerging among some ministers to ensure Home Secretary Theresa May overwhelmingly wins the first ballot of MPs next Tuesday. This, it is said, would allow the party to rally round her and cut short the contest. Mrs May so far has received more pledges of support from Conservative MPs than Mr Gove and the other three candidates – Stephen Crabb, Liam Fox and Andrea Leadsom. The five contenders have until Tuesday to build support among the 329 Conservative MPs before the first round of voting. The MP with the fewest votes will be eliminated, one at a time, until two remain. They will then go to a vote of the wider party membership. The winner of the contest is set to be announced on 9 September. Mr Gove decision to throw his hat into the ring was met with incredulity by the media and many of Mr Johnson’s supporters. Asked whether he had been betrayed by Mr Gove, Mr Johnson told reporters as he left his home that “unfortunately he couldn’t get on with what he wanted to do” and it was now “up to somebody else”. Dominic Raab, a former supporter of Mr Johnson who has now switched his support to Mr Gove, said to outsiders the move would look “ugly, horrific and Machiavellian” and insisted Mr Gove and others had tried to make their alliance with Mr Johnson work.He told BBC Radio 5Live that Mr Gove was now the “change candidate” in the contest, and MP best-placed to “seize the opportunities” offered by Brexit given his track record of “reforming zeal” and also his ability to deliver. Mr Gove, who launched his own #Gove2016 Twitter account on Friday, has also been backed as a man of “principle and conviction” by the Culture Secretary John Whittingdale.But former Conservative chancellor Ken Clarke said the justice secretary should now reconsider his shock decision to enter the contest, saying he “would all do us a favour if he stood down now and speed up the process”. Mr Gove had been an outstanding cabinet minister, he said, but his conduct in recent weeks had not been “encouraging”. “I do think one of the first priorities for a leader of a party and certainly a prime minister is that you should have the trust, as far as possible, of your colleagues,” he told Radio 4’s Today. “This kind of public performance is more suitable for the student union than it is to be prime minister of this country at a time of grave, grave potential crisis.” Asked whether he was now backing Mrs May, he said she was “in the right class of contender” but he wanted to hear from her and the others how they would execute the process of leaving the EU. Mrs May has been boosted by the support of the Daily Mail and Cabinet colleagues including defence secretary Michael Fallon. Liam Fox said the focus should squarely be on how the UK negotiated its exit from the EU and got the best possible deal, saying anything else was a serious distraction.”We’re in the process of electing a prime minister who will actually take us out of the European Union, and yet we seem to be permanently distracted by what can only be described as the politics of the Oxford Union in recent days,” Radio 4’s Today.”I think it was a distraction, we need Brexit for grown-ups and we need to be talking about the big issues.”And Mrs Leadsom said that while Mrs May was a “totally brilliant home secretary”, she believed the next prime minister should be someone who “really believes that the UK would be better off once we leave the EU”.”The clear priority is to deliver on the referendum,” the energy minister told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.”We have been given an instruction, we now have to get a grip and get on with it.”
