By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor
When your own dad denies your claims you know you are in trouble, and Brexiteer Michael Gove has just been caught in that net.
The Guardian have reported that Gove’s own dad has denied claims his son came out with about his business interest in the fishing industry. It will be embarrassing for Michael Gove, who has made the claim on more than one occasion.
Gove had said that his firm in Aberdeen which operated as a fish processing firm had struggled due to EU fisheries policies.
Ernest Gove told the paper that he actually sold the business because the fishing industry in Aberdeen was being damaged by a range of different factors.
The reasons he gave we the Icelandic cod wars, dockworkers’ strikes, space in the port due to North Sea oil vessels and a new two hundred mile limit brought in to control over-fishing.
Gove who is an ardent Leave campaigner and one of the leading figures leading up to the referendum on June 23rd told BBC’s Question Time that his dad’s company had “went to the wall” due to problems caused by EU rules. The policies had indeed “destroyed it.”
Gove also mentioned his father’s business problems with the EU in a primetime Sky News interview on 3 June. He said: “I know myself, from my own background,” he said. “I know the European Union depresses employment and destroys jobs. My father had a fishing business in Aberdeen destroyed by the European Union and the common fisheries policy.”
Gove Snr however, said he did believe the industry in Scotland “more or less collapsed down” after the EU became involved in fisheries policy, but sold his firm voluntarily, as a viable business.
Gove Snr said: “It wasn’t any hardship or things like that. I just decided to call it a day and sold up my business and went on to work with someone else,” he said.
“[I] couldn’t see any future in it, that type of thing, the business that I had, so I wasn’t going to go into all the trouble of having hardship. I just decided to sell up and get a job with someone else. That was all.”
The fishing industry was also brought into the spotlight in some style today has Nigel Farage and Bob Geldof did battle on the Thames in various vessels. The UKIP leader was there with a protest led by fisherman, but the Band Aid creator arrived with his own fleet, blaring music and generally trying to disrupt the Brexit procession,