Sarah Vine, the Daily Mail’s self-professed “Wednesday witch”, will return to the paper for the first time on Wednesday, following her husband Michael Gove’s short-lived bid to be Tory leader.
Vine has not appeared in the paper since her last column on 29 June in which she revealed her husband’s response to the shock Brexit referendum win: “Gosh. I suppose I had better get up.”
Her absence came 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.
It sparked speculation that Vine’s departure from the paper was a permanent one, and the contents of her comeback column on Wednesday will be eagerly anticipated.
An insider on the paper said it would be “business as usual” for the columnist. Previously, a Mail spokesman had insisted: “We are looking forward to her next brilliant column in the Mail.”
Vine’s column is likely to be forensically examined in the wake of Gove’s exit from the Tory leadership race, with May now installed as party leader and prime minister.
In earlier columns, with the race still wide open, Vine had used the first-person plural “we” to discuss leading the country in the wake of the EU vote.
Her decision not to write a column in the weeks that followed is understood to relate to the exceptional circumstances in which her husband found himself.
