The foreign secretary doesn’t even pretend to be a serious politician. Recent history shows this may go down well with Tory members
The Tory leadership contest is a three-way battle. Rishi Sunak campaigns against Liz Truss and Liz Truss campaigns against gravity. The former chancellor’s pitch is to renew a party weighed down by 12 years in power. The foreign secretary pretends that those years are a burden on some other party. She offers the fantasy of regime change.
It is a difference of demeanour more than policy. Sunak performs in the earnest managerial style of a minister holding a line in a broadcast interview. Truss’s vibe is an opposition MP holding forth at a party conference fringe event. The foreign secretary doesn’t even pretend to be in the business of serious government, which, to be fair, she isn’t. She is playing by Boris Johnson’s rules in a game that was never won with seriousness.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
