Tom Tugendhat may have the most interesting merchandise in this Tory leadership contest (including fake tan, for reasons no-one has yet explained), but he is not, as things stand, the frontrunner. He is also the least experienced of the contenders in government terms, though he decided today to compensate for that in his on-stage interview in the conference hall by talking about being a soldier.
Just in case anyone there hadn’t picked up that Tugendhat has served his country, he made sure he slipped it into to any answer that was vaguely relevant, including that ‘I’m not going to hold against anybody their inexperience in combat or their inexperience in foreign affairs’. It was interesting that he also used his military career as the reason for not going into detail on whether he thought Israel had conducted its war in Gaza a proportionate manner, telling the interviewer Chris Hope that ‘as a solider’ (that phrase again), ‘I can tell you the decisions that are taken need to be looked at very carefully, but are not always reported exactly, not misreporting but they’re sometimes difficult to understand or difficult to explain’.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in