My comments were widely interpreted to be anti-aspirational and it was suggested that I was seeking revenge against the man who, while Chancellor, had been planning a coup for a very long time and who had ruthlessly and metaphorically stabbed Boris Johnson in the back.
Rishi had been plotting against the most electorally successful Prime Minister the Conservative Party has known since the days of Margaret Thatcher. His actions made Michael Gove’s betrayal of Boris Johnson during the 2016 leadership campaign appear like a rank amateur rehearsing for the role of Brutus in a village hall play.
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I wanted to highlight Rishi’s misguided sartorial style in order to alert Tory members not to be taken in by appearances in the way that happened to many of us who served with the Chancellor in Cabinet. The assassin’s gleaming smile, his gentle voice and even his diminutive stature had many of us well and truly fooled.