We tried to provide a bit of competition for perhaps the Cabinet’s most inventive Minister by chucking in a Sports Minister who really knows her stuff; an Education Minister who has devoted his career to raising standards, and the Defence Minister who battled in vain to save the life of a brave police officer during March’s terror attack on the Palace of Westminster.
It made no difference to anything very much, and the Environment Secretary sailed home with over half the vote. The two most prominent eligible names in the write-ins were David Davis and Boris Johnson. This is further evidence, were it needed, of the Brexiteering sympathies of the panel – though these seem, as our earlier ToryDiary reports, to be balanced by a strong loyalist instinct.