The latest Tory leadership debate was a grim spectacle

The eyes had it, in last night’s leadership debate. Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak took turns directing to the camera a puppy-eyed gaze. Tom Tugendhat blinked manfully, as if overcome from time to time with a sense of his humble desire to serve. Kemi Badenoch blinked, too – but more in the way of someone regretting the decision to switch her specs out for contact lenses. And if Liz Truss – an apprentice of Mrs Thatcher’s gimlet-eyed stare – blinked at all, I confess I didn’t notice it.

I was distracted by the fact that she seemed to have four eyebrows rather than the usual human ration of two. I suppose she had decided she’d look more statesmanlike by drawing them on higher up her brow, but failed to completely erase her original, homegrown eyebrows. They sat rebukingly below the new ones, faint traces, like an objective correlative of the Liberal Democrat past that her rival candidates would insist on reminding her of.