JEREMY Hunt is a nice chap with few enemies.
In the ruthless world of hard-boiled politics, such characteristics were seen as signs of weakness. Not any more, it seems.
Today they are considered assets for the man most likely to be our next Prime Minister.
Even his single identifiable sin — a Remainer in a party of flinty-eyed Brexiteers — no longer seems a bar to highest office.
In the shifting sands of Tory tribalism, the Europhile ex-Health Secretary is regarded today as the last best hope of saving Liz Truss from the chop.
In words unimaginable three weeks ago, a pro-Truss Brexiteer told me: “Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor is a really good appointment.
“Nobody dislikes him and he has never done anything badly wrong. He is now effectively Prime Minister. This may be the answer.”
The answer to what? To keeping BoJo “assassin” Rishi Sunak out of Downing Street at any price.
Jeremy Hunt is a Remainer bogeyman who tried to stop Britain leaving the EU Single Market, but for Westminster plotters there is only one rule: “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.”
It doesn’t even matter if Jeremy is in fact a friend of Rishi and campaigned for him as PM.
What matters to Boris’s supporters is that Jeremy stops him making it in No 10.
Does he have the steel?
We will find out in a fortnight, as the new Chancellor delivers his first emergency Budget.
In this time of financial crisis, with the reputation of UK plc in peril, Hunt cannot avoid offence. If it don’t hurt, it ain’t working.
The Chancellor’s first duty is to soothe the troubled money markets, revive the Pound, fight inflation and keep mortgage rates down.
He must take painful decisions on tax and spending, look after the poor and keep costs under tight control.
There must be a programme for future tax cuts and lower borrowing.
And he needs to stop Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey blaming everyone but himself for letting interest rates out of control.
The reason they are about to rise again, sharply, is because Bailey failed to act sooner to cut living costs.
A period of calm might take the pressure off Liz Truss, but Jeremy will have to take the heat.
Chancellors are not meant to be popular. If he gets this right, he will be the most powerful figure in government.
Hunt ran the NHS for six years as health supremo and knows how Whitehall works. He will probably deliver.
He claims two defeats in bids for the Tory crown have “clinically excised” all ambition.
But would he surrender a third chance at the top job and hand it to someone who isn’t even in government?
Ministers don’t reach Cabinet rank without a big ego and a thirst for real power.
Nobody — including Liz Truss — is more powerful today than Jeremy Hunt. He won’t step aside.
His surprise appointment as Chancellor has changed all the dynamics.
Rishi may be brilliant, but he is an ex-Chancellor whose leadership campaign showed he can be flat-footed. He is no longer quite the flavour of the month.
Yet it is an extraordinary twist, even in these unprecedented times, that a vehement Remainer who lost the argument is now backed by the Tory Right to keep a Brexiteer out of Downing Street.
Grassroots members believed they were voting this summer to reinforce the referendum result of 2016 and the final break with the EU in 2019.
They picked Liz Truss as a born-again Brexiteer and rejected Rishi Sunak for his perceived betrayal of their hero Boris Johnson.
Now they find themselves landed with a here-today, gone-tomorrow PM who could be replaced within days or weeks by a man who barely reached the starting post this summer.
Conservatives risk being transformed overnight from the party which delivered Brexit three years ago into a Ted Heath-style relic of the 1970s, pleading for re-entry to Brussels.
I SPENT the weekend in a delightful country town with clean pavements, a thriving high street, friendly shoppers and not a whiff of weed or a stab-proof vest in sight.
Now back in our capital city, I’m keeping an eye open for casual violence.
Why? Because a close relative was threatened at 2am by a gang of hammer-wielding bike thieves.
Two innocent men were stabbed a stone’s throw away in broad daylight. County lines drug gangs infest our park.
And an elderly neighbour who asked a man carrying a bike down narrow steps to wait a moment was rewarded with a gob in the face.
Makes you proud to be a Londoner, Mayor Khan.
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