Sarah Vine’s weekly column is not expected to appear in the Daily Mail as usual this week after her husband Michael Gove launched his bid to lead the Tory party.
Vine’s disappearance from the paper’s daily news schedule and failure to turn up on deadline day prompted rumours that she had left the paper on Tuesday. However, this was denied by sources on the Mail, who suggested that she might be otherwise engaged with her husband’s leadership campaign.
Her break comes after a highly embarrassing email was leaked in which she urged Gove to demand a senior job from the then leadership front runner Boris Johnson and suggested that her boss, Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre, as well as Rupert Murdoch, would back Gove in any contest.
Two days later the Mail came out with a strong endorsement of Gove’s rival Theresa May.
This Wednesday’s column was eagerly anticipated given Vine’s lively description of the household reaction to last week’s vote to leave the EU. In the column, the Mail’s self-professed “Wednesday witch” used the first person plural “we” to discuss leading the country in the wake of the vote and described her husband’s response to learning that the leave campaign had won the referendum.
Her decision not to write this week is understood to relate to the exceptional circumstances in which her husband finds himself. Gove is currently tipped to come third in the leadership race, leaving Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom to battle for the top job.
A Mail spokesman said: “We are looking forward to her next brilliant column in the Mail.”
