In the same interview he said “I tend to be rather bad at politics”, which is true if one takes the holding of great offices of state as the yardstick of success.
Parts of the media suspected, wrongly, that she was an Establishment stooge: her work leading the Vaccine Taskforce has since been triumphantly vindicated.
Plus: Free school meals, Pointless Celebrities, Bower’s book And: “Did the honourable lady just call me scum?” Your chance to drink to that.
“She is a Johnson, they have a bit of a history of saying stuff”.
At times, says the Education Secretary, the post he holds requires “a bold and vociferous and constant presence”. But “at other times less so”.
Plus: The mystery of the missing Kwasi Kwarteng. The presence of the ebullient Brandon Lewis. The absence and recovery of Nick de Bois. Plus: Capita’s failures.
But Samantha Cameron and Marina Wheeler have proved less forthcoming than Rachel Johnson and Sarah Vine.
Technically, May still has time to avoid European elections. Politically, it is very hard indeed to see how she now can.