A candid answer? You can forget being next PM

Usually when a politician refuses to give a straight answer, it’s frustrating – but sometimes the refusal to give a straight answer tells you all you need to know.

Yesterday Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, was taking questions at a lunch of the Commons press gallery. The BBC’S Laura Kuenssberg asked him whether he intended to stand as a candidate in the eventual Tory leadership contest. Yes, or no?

He adopted what he presumably imagined to be an expression of Sphinx-like inscrutability.

“Wait and see,” he said, cryptically. Now I am a mere parliamentary sketch writer, not a Scotland Yard detective or veteran of Bletchley Park. None the less, I believe I may have stumbled across one or two clues that may potentially shed light on Mr Hunt’s closely guarded intentions.

I’m thinking of the moment when he was asked whether Prime Minister Hunt would call a snap general election and he said: “I don’t think it’s time to talk about Prime Minister Hunt, because we have Prime Minister May.”

I’m also thinking of the moment when he was asked whether the next Tory leader should be someone who (unlike Mr Hunt) had voted for Brexit in 2016, and he said: “I think it’s got to be someone who believes in Brexit… someone who believes, as I do, that…”

It’s a brainteaser but I have my suspicions. Anyway, Tories will no doubt be reassured to hear Mr Hunt say that, despite having voted Remain, he now believes in Brexit. Then again, they might have a nagging sensation that they’ve heard this one before. “You can only deliver Brexit if you

believe in Brexit,” declared one senior Tory minister in 2017. I forget her name. Theresa…? It’ll come to me.

Not all Mr Hunt’s fellow ministers are keeping their cards as close to their chest. Yesterday Rory Stewart, the prisons minister, cheerfully told The

Spectator he would love to be PM. “If you want someone who really enjoys doing stuff, and loves government, and is really proud of the country, and feels that’s their thing,” he gushed, “I’m really enthusiastic.” Straight answers? He’ll never get anywhere in politics with an attitude like that.