Doctor’s orders

Second acts in British politics are vanishingly rare these days and Liam Fox, restored to the cabinet by Theresa May, is determined to make the most of his. We meet at his central London flat at half-past four on Sunday afternoon and even then the International Trade Secretary is beavering away: preparing for his meetings at the World Trade Organisation in Geneva the following day and finishing off his conference speech. He offers us a drink — red wine? pink champagne? — but pours a cup of tea for himself.

Fox, as ever, is full of fizz. He clearly loves being back at the centre of things, and immediately starts contrasting Theresa May’s premiership with that of David Cameron. ‘We think similarly,’ he says. He enthuses about her ‘meritocratic’ agenda and how she is handling the job: ‘Her whole approach to government is much more methodical.’ Fox is a former GP and says she ‘fits in with what I like to think of as the “doctor test”.