Michael Gove isn't going to prime minister and that might be a bad thing

Michael Gove has been eliminated from the race to become the next Conservative leader and de facto Prime Minister, and we might all be sorry.

The race is now between Home Secretary Theresa May and former banker Andrea Leadsom.

But the public may miss the vision for Britain that the Justice Secretary had.

And with Leadson explaining her opposition to gay marriage legislation, the chance for a different kind of Conservatism might just have flown us by.

Or maybe not.

Either way, here are seven reasons you might have liked Prime Minister Michael more than you think:

1. He has impeccable manners. Civil servants say he is one of the most courteous people they work for.

2. He isn't an Old Etonian. Gove has attacked the "preposterous" number of Etonians in the government's inner circle and was himself adopted by a Labour-supporting family in Aberdeen.

3. He might not even be that Conservative at all. He was originally rejected from a job at the Conservative Research Department for being "insufficiently Conservative".

4. He believes that "social progress has always been a Conservative cause" and said that rehabilitation should be at the heart of the criminal justice system when he became Justice Secretary.

5. Andrea Leadsom once said she wanted to stay in the EU before then campaigning for Leave, has been accused of exaggerating her CV, and is one of only five Tories to abstain from the vote on gay marriage. Gove, meanwhile, was one of 19 senior Tories to sign a letter calling for marriage for all.

6. Theresa May said in her speech to the Conservative Party conference in October 2015 that mass immigration makes it "impossible to build a cohesive society".

7. He seems to do proper research on the Department he is given, be it the Education one or the Justice one, to make sure he understands. The leader of teaching union NAHT Russell Hobby once said Gove had "mastered" the education brief to a degree "rarely seen."

Then again, this could all count for little. Teachers who felt the sharp end of Gove's drive to help when Education Secretary have said they felt vilified.

It is truly a Game of Thrones. Who remembers the days when George Osborne was tipped for the top job?

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