There’s plenty of speculation in Westminster today that Philip Hammond is busy positioning himself as a future leadership contender. Last night he had some pretty strong words about the Government’s proposals for same-sex marriage, saying:
‘There is a real sense of anger among many people who are married that any government thinks it has the ability to change the definition of an institution like marriage.’
Meanwhile the FT identifies him as a reluctant cutter of his own department’s spending in its report about George Osborne’s £9bn black hole.
Hammond certainly features on the list of names that I’ve compiled from conversations with Tories about who has either told their nearest and dearest that they would like to run for leader if a vacancy appeared – which is very different, of course, to someone who wants to be leader now and is prepared to stage a coup – or who already has infrastructure around an embryonic leadership campaign.
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