David Cameron is not the natural heir to Tony Blair - because he is more humble, according to education secretary Michael Gove.
"The danger, to be fair, about Blair is that I think that … he was always thinking 'does my legacy look big in this?'"
Comparing the two men during an interview at a Channel 4 Conservative Party fringe meeting, Gove also said: "David is one of the most ego-free politicians I've ever met and he doesn't need external validation from the media, from parliamentary colleagues."
Gove - who famously admires former prime minister Tony Blair - also noted that George Osborne was the obvious frontrunner in the Cabinet to replace Cameron as Tory leader.
And he praised Rupert Murdoch, who he used to work for as a news editor at News International's The Times and with who he met 11 times over a year.
"I'm a great admirer of Rupert Murdoch … I think he's a force of nature, I think he's a great man."
He said that without Murdoch's investment, the British press would not be what it is today,
"I do think that any judgement on what he's contributed to this country, has to take into account [his investment in newspapers]."
And Gove emphasised that he'd had no knowledge of interception of voicemails during his sting at The Times: "I was as surprised as anyone by the revelations about phone hacking. I was a news editor, not a particularly successful one for 18 months.. But I was totally unaware of this practice."
Gove also defended himself against claims his advisers had used an off-network email address to communicate with one another, saying he had a shared email account with his wife that he had "always used" as his career email address changed.
The education secretary said it was shared with his wife: "But the name that we chose, it was our shared email, we have a shared bank account and a shared email."
In a highly personal interview, he revealed how "enormously grateful" he was to his adoptive parents, and was reluctant to meet his birth mother.
Gove's biological mother was a student and he spent four months in care after he was born: "Because I had such a fantastic upbringing, because my parents did so much for me, that one of the reasons why I haven't pursued the natural curiosity.. to find out more about my birth mother."
He added: "I were to pursue that it might seem disrespectful."
Discussing politics, he said he was happy to fight his Lib Dem coalition partners at the next election, but emphasised it would be wrong to find "hatred or disdain where it doesn't exist".