Jeremy hunt

Although there's three weeks until the next Tory leader is announced, the contest is entering what is the most important week of the membership stage. On Saturday (6 July), postal ballots will begin to be sent to the Tory membership. The expectation is that the majority of members will vote quickly rather than wait to see how the contest plays out over the remaining weeks. It follows that each campaign sees this week as pivotal for getting its message out there. In that vein, Jeremy Hunt hardened his Brexit position over the weekend. The Foreign Secretary used an appearance on the Andrew Marr Show to try and beef up his no-deal credentials.

He just will not do. Sexual incontinence alone should not disqualify Boris from the premiership, though it is hardly an asset. But the latest incident dramatises the flaws in his character. Indeed, one could say that he is all flaw and no character. There are three major flaws. The first is serial dishonesty. He simply has no concept of truth. As Philip Stephens of the FT once put it, Boris has lied his way through life and politics. He will say whatever is necessary to get himself out of a hole of his own digging. But if anyone quotes Boris back to himself, even a couple of days later, his reaction will be incomprehension and irritation. The second is profound selfishness. For Boris, other people only exist as an instrument of his own gratification.

Forget what you’ve been told about the Conservative leadership campaign. The Boris campaign's weekend meltdown has not lost him the election. And Jeremy Hunt has not suddenly leapt into the lead. This is still Boris’s election to lose and the odds are that he will almost certainly triumph. The reason is simple. Boris is following the tried-and-tested playbook of successful campaigns the world over. He is speaking plainly and to the right people. And he has a simple message that he repeats often, reassuring party members that he is the man to trust on the issue that they care about: Brexit. In recent weeks, Boris's campaign has changed dramatically. But this was a tactical shift and wasn't a sudden panic.

There is a lot of confusion about Boris Johnson’s approach to Brexit. And that is deliberate because the candidate has yet to make a big call about the nature of the modifications he is seeking to the Brexit plan negotiated by Theresa May. The ultra Brexiters among his supporters, the hard core of the European Research Group led by Steve Baker and Jacob Rees-Mogg, want him to ditch her Withdrawal Agreement completely – and replace that with a “GATT 24” temporary free trade arrangement for the years that would be necessary for the negotiation of a permanent new trade deal with the EU. This they regard as true liberation from the EU. Now confusingly Johnson yesterday – in a Talkradio interview – referred to this as his “Plan B”.

Around nine million people – over 17 per cent of the population – live in an area classed as ‘rural’. That number is set to grow; by 2025, it has been estimated that the population of the English countryside will have increased by half a million. So surely, when a politician is bidding to become the next prime minister, it would make sense to consider what the rural population’s priorities might be. A national survey of rural opinion on the leadership contest, organised by the Countryside Alliance, would indicate that this isn’t happening. It’s far from new to say that farming communities are worried about Brexit, and concerned that their needs aren’t being considered in the debate. But that’s not the only cause for concern.

Jeremy Hunt is proving to be a more aggressive rival than many in the Boris Johnson campaign expected. Shortly before the last round of parliamentary voting, Hunt talked about putting ‘Boris through his paces’ which made him sound more like a personal trainer than a political opponent. But since making the final two, Hunt has been far punchier. His attacks on Boris Johnson this morning for ducking various TV debates are properly aggressive. Hunt’s attacks are garnering more attention because, after a relatively smooth parliamentary stage, Boris Johnson is having a wobble. The fallout from the Thursday night incident at his partner’s flat isn’t helping and his Brexit answer is still far too woolly.

The first televised Tory leadership debate drew as much attention for who wasn't there as who was. After Boris Johnson decided to avoid the Channel 4 leadership debate on the grounds that voters had had enough blue-on-blue action (and perhaps also that as the Tory leadership frontrunner he has little to gain and much to lose from such an event), the broadcaster decided to effectively empty-chair him – putting up a lectern where he would have been. It then fell to Johnson's leadership rivals Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid, Dominic Raab, Rory Stewart and Michael Gove to provide the substance of the 90-minute programme. It kicked off with enough blue-on-blue attacks for the Johnson campaign to have some cover over their decision to give it a miss.

So it turns out that there may have been a quid pro quo behind Amber Rudd’s backing for Jeremy Hunt, her former political mentor, beyond the usual conversations about Cabinet jobs. Amber – who is for some reason that escapes me is considered a kingmaker – was interviewed this morning about one possible impediment to a shared world view between the two of them: Jeremy Hunt’s take on abortion, something that Amber says “is very important to me”. Of Hunt's view, expressed on Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday, that the legal limit for abortion should be reduced from 24 weeks to 12, she said it was his "personal, private view".  "That has always been his view," she said.

When a head of state flies in for a state visit, it’s traditional for the Foreign Secretary to lead the welcoming committee. When Donald Trump landed at Stansted airport in Air Force One, Jeremy Hunt was left waiting on the tarmac for a while. Hunt assumed that a tired Trump was ‘probably just powdering his nose’ after a long flight. It transpired, however, that the Commander-in-Chief was busy tweeting his denunciations of Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London (‘a stone-cold loser’) — thereby setting the news agenda for the day. ‘I found out almost in real time because the President told me about his tweets,’ the Foreign Secretary says, when we meet the day after. ‘I do think we have to learn from his ability to communicate,’ he adds.

Jeremy Hunt’s approach is very odd. It is the first time I remember an aspirant for the top job saying: ‘Choose me: I’m frightened of a general election.’ He is obviously right that an election without Brexit accomplished would be very difficult for the Conservatives to win, but the way through that is not to narrow your possibilities in advance. If the newly chosen leader, with the mandate that being newly chosen brings, decided that no deal were his necessary negotiating backstop (which surely it is) or, more controversially, that he wanted it without negotiating at all, he would then be in a strong position to dare his parliamentary party to vote against him, bring down him and his government and thus nullify the choice the party members would just have made.

Kit Malthouse's entry into the Conservative leadership contest has created quite a problem for the other candidates, not so much because he appears to offer a serious threat to the more established campaigns, but because he is the architect of the 'Malthouse Compromise', which once promised to solve all of Theresa May's Brexit problems. The trouble with the Malthouse Compromise is that its name includes a now highly-toxic C-word. Theresa May used 'compromise' so much in the weeks before she finally gave up and announced she was resigning that no leadership candidate worth their salt wants to drop it into conversation now. Even those who think that the best way through the Brexit deadlock really will involve a lot of compromise know they can't use that word.

With Theresa May's departure expected later this year, the race is underway among her Tory colleagues to position themselves as her likely successor. The weekend papers were filled with ministers at pains to prove their credentials – with Liz Truss calling for one million homes to be built on the green belt and Matt Hancock and Amber Rudd sparking rumours of a double ticket after they penned an article calling for a 'modern, compassionate Conservative party'. On Monday evening Jeremy Hunt appeared to show some ankle of his own with a speech to the Lord Mayor's Banquet. Discussing Britain's place in the world, the Foreign Secretary said the UK is held in 'far higher respect abroad than we sometimes have for ourselves at home'.

Although Jeremy Hunt is often depicted as a more statesman-like figure than his predecessor at the Foreign Office, the Foreign Secretary has had his fair share of gaffes. Not long into the brief, Hunt made headlines when he mistakenly identified his wife as Japanese when she is in fact Chinese. At Thursday's Press Gallery lunch, Hunt attempted to make light of the situation – insisting that his wife has since forgiven him for the slip. But will she forgive him for his latest error?

It's a new year, a new dawn, a new day – and for many Brits a fresh start. Unless you're Theresa May. The Prime Minister begins 2019 with things much the same as they were in 2018. Her party is at war over Brexit, she still has a hugely unpopular piece of legislation to pass and her rivals are circling – attempting to boost their appeal to the Tory membership in anticipation of an eventual leadership contest. After a briefing war between No.10 and the Home Office over the Christmas period – which saw details of leadership frontrunner Sajid Javid's luxury holiday wind up in the papers – it's now the turn of Jeremy Hunt to cause a stir. The Foreign Secretary is in Singapore flying the flag for Global Britain.

The past few months have been testing for the so-called special relationship. President Trump's visit to the UK ended in disaster for Theresa May when the US President gave an interview to the Sun in which he declared that her proposed Brexit deal would kill any chance of a UK/US trade deal. However, not all Cabinet ministers had a wholly bad experience. On Tuesday night, Mr S headed along to Jeremy Hunt's Foreign Office Christmas reception at Lancaster House – also known as the 'Foreign Secretary's leadership launch,' according to a fellow Cabinet minister. In his speech, Hunt told guests how his own relationship with Trump had flourished on that visit. The reason? It's not that Hunt hit it off with Trump in person.

Will Theresa May's government find a way out of the Brexit maze? As the Prime Minister's backstop plans are deemed a dead end by her colleagues, it looks as though Downing Street are fast running out of options. But could inspiration be found in Jeremy Hunt? The Foreign Secretary took to social media to boast that he and his fellow European foreign ministers had managed to navigate Chevening maze in the rain – making the Brexit negotiations seem comparatively straightforward: https://twitter.com/Jeremy_Hunt/status/1051512481435275265 Captions in the comments.