UK Government minister Michael Gove made racist and sexist remarks and praised policies by Thatcher ensuring the “happy south stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the northerner”, newly revealed recordings appear to show.

The vile remarks by Cabinet Office boss Gove were made during speeches at the Cambridge Union while he was in his 20s, according to The Independent.

The comments are said to have been made in sessions in 1987, February 1993 and December 1993.

The 1987 speech – during his final year at Oxford – seems to see Gove praising Margaret Thatcher’s “rigorously, vigorously, virulently, virilely, heterosexual” policies.

The recording continues: “We are at last experiencing a new empire: an empire where the happy south stamps over the cruel, dirty, toothless face of the northerner. At last Mrs Thatcher is saying I don’t give a fig for what half of the population say because the richer half will keep me in power.

“This may be amoral, this may be immoral, but it’s politics and it’s pragmatism.”

Gove is also said to have spoken in favour of the motion “This House believes that the British Empire was lost on the playing fields of Eton”.

He reportedly said: “It may be moral to keep an empire because the fuzzy-wuzzies can’t look after themselves.

“It may be immoral to keep an empire because the people of the third world have an inalienable right to self-determination, but that doesn’t matter whether it’s moral or immoral.”

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster also described Prince Charles as “a dull, wet, drippy adulterer whose romantic conversation is dominated by lavatorial detail.”

The recording seems to then show Gove taking a jab at the then president of the Union, saying: “Putting you in charge of the Cambridge Union was rather like putting Slobodan Milosevic in Serbian high command in charge of a rape crisis centre.”

The Independent claims Gove said gay people “thrive primarily upon short-term relations” in one of the speeches.

In the February 1993 recording, speaking in favour of the motion “This House would rather have a degree from the university of life”, Gove imagined an exchange between himself and then European Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan.

Brittan is imagined to have told him: “[Leon] said: ‘Cambridge taught me an appreciation of music. And in particular an appreciation of the mature male soprano voice.”

The imagined conversation continues with Brittan saying there was “no sound sweeter” than a young boy’s voice breaking, apart from the sound of that same boy involved in a sex act.

It is then said that Brittan “satisfies his desires in the Bois de Boulogne and various other Brussels hang outs.”

Ten months later, in December 1993, Gove made a speech in support of the motion “This House prefers a woman on top”.

Lucy Frazer, who is now justice minister, invited Gove to address the event and is also mentioned in the recordings.

Gove allegedly said she was “actually capable of tempting me into bed with her” and implied a college’s entire rugby club had had group sex with her.

He spoke of her “preference for peach-flavoured condoms,” and praised her for making it from “the back streets of the slums of Leeds”.

Gove and Frazer declined to comment.