Kemi Badenoch showed a deft grasp of her brief amid a grilling from Sky News’ Ed Conway last night, during which she fended off Brexit criticisms by criticising the “fake conversation” Remainers try to have about it.

“What I find frustrating is we spend loads of time trying to relitigate Brexit rather than focus on solving new issues that come up… I’m not here to go back to 2017/2019 and do that, we wasted so much time and I’m not here to waste time, I’m here to solve problems for business.”

“Having a long discussion around ‘oh but it was better this year but not that year, oh it’s gone up, gone down…’ it is the long-term trend that I need to work towards rather than ‘what happened this year/last year’. I think that is what I would call a fake conversation. It’s like asking people who just got married ‘where’s the baby? Where’s the baby?'”

Without realising it, Rishi’s mini-reshuffle has manoeuvred Kemi into the perfect position to fight the post-election Tory leadership race…