Michael Gove has said a “critical part” of his party’s electoral recovery must be made in the North, as he warned against “Treasury brain” ahead of October’s Budget.

At a Conservative Party conference fringe event in Birmingham, the former levelling up secretary described the 2024 poll as an “ejection election”.

He also ruled himself out of a future bid to become mayor of London, and declined to endorse one of the four Conservative Party leadership hopefuls – Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat.

“The overwhelming feeling at the general election was ‘this is an ejection election’,” Mr Gove told delegates and activists.

He urged them not to focus on other parties’ performances, pointing to Conservative losses to Reform UK in Great Yarmouth, the Green Party in Waveney Valley, the Liberal Democrats in his former Surrey Heath seat, and Labour in Aldershot.

Mr Gove added: “We shouldn’t be trying to second-guess what other parties will do.”

Asked whether he would stand to replace Labour’s Sadiq Khan as mayor in London, the Conservative former MP replied “no” to shouts of “go on” and “yes” from the crowd.

“No, you need someone much younger, much more effective and much better looking than me,” he said.

On stage in a marquee, Mr Gove had earlier defended the mayoral system in other English cities beyond London.

He said: “The original vision of elected mayors outside London was George Osborne’s and at the time that he did it, working in Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, Tees Valley and so on, it was assumed that this would be handing power automatically to Labour.

“It was assumed that the West Midlands, probably Tees Valley, certainly would elect Labour politicians.

Tom Tugendhat and Lord Ben Houchen chat over a take-away coffee
Tom Tugendhat met Tees Valley mayor Lord Ben Houchen at the Conservative Party conference on Sunday, but Lord Houchen did not say whether he would endorse Mr Tugendhat (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

“But we saw with the success of Andy Street and Ben Houchen, that is not so.”

Lord Houchen’s third term as Tees Valley mayor, which he secured at a vote earlier this year, combined with past Conservative wins in Redcar and Middlesbrough, “shows that a critical part of our recovery will be in the North”, Mr Gove added.

Asked whether the levelling up agenda which he led in government was a “sticking plaster” for a decline in steel and coal, marked on Monday by the Port Talbot blast furnace and Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station shutdowns, he told the PA news agency: “No, not at all.

“Levelling up started as a drive in 2019, arguably even preceded that, so no.

“It was intended to be a long-term exercise. I hope it will be sustained as a long-term exercise and the missions made that clear.

“But you know it is the case that having a programme of effective reindustrialisation of the country is important.”

Mr Gove criticised so-called “Treasury brain” in government, ahead of a Budget due on October 30.

On the way in which civil servants review investments, he said: “The way it works unfortunately means that the nominal return, say, on improving train times between Guildford and London is weighted disproportionately in such a way that it looks much better in terms of bang for your buck than improving rail links between, say, Sheffield and Manchester.”

Mr Gove said the phrase “Treasury brain … speaks to two things”, and claimed officials would have raised concerns with the 1944 D-Day landings on the basis they were “novel and contentious”.

He said: “The Treasury is where the brightest brains are in government but it’s also the case that the Treasury brain – and it’s quite a small-c conservative thing – looks at different propositions and it takes the view: ‘Hmm, you sir are saying that if we invest now, we’ll secure all sorts of benefits later.

“‘I’ve heard that a hundred times. All I know is you’re calling on me to invest now, that means spending money. These benefits, they may never come.’

“So there’s a classic sort of Tory scepticism of utopianism within the Treasury, but the parallel to that is there’s also a scepticism of anything which is anything which is in Treasury phrase ‘novel and contentious’.”

On school standards, Mr Gove said changes to Ofsted and the curriculum review gave him “cause for concern”.

The Labour Government scrapped single-phrase headline inspection grades in September, and promised report cards featuring a “much broader picture of how schools are performing”.

Becky Francis, seconded from her role as Education Endowment Foundation chief executive, is leading an independent review into the curriculum.

The former education secretary said: “It was a tragedy that one individual inspection was followed by a suicide, horrific tragedy, but my worry is that the sharp accountability that we need in order to improve the school system is progressively being eroded, linked to that the requirement for academies and free schools to follow the national curriculum, linked to that the fact that the person who’s been put in charge of the curriculum review – a very talented academic – but some of the language around what they want to do suggests to me that we’ll be moving away from the knowledge-rich approach that has yielded such benefits.

“Now, as I say, it may be the case that actually Ofsted can be strengthened.

“It may be the case that the curriculum review actually enhances the curriculum, but I am worried.”