Telegraph man's love letter to Priti Patel

The weekend saw a peculiarly fawning interview with shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel in the Sunday Telegraph – an interview which, such a coup it was apparently to secure, associate editor Gordon Rayner pulled rank over his Westminster-based underlings to conduct personally.

Readers got to learn how Patel is “one of the friendliest front-line politicians in Westminster” and about her “genuine, uncompromising passion for conservatism, and for Britain, that has made her such an essential part of successive Tory administrations since she became an MP in 2010” (apart from those of, er, Theresa May, who sacked her, and Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, neither of whom gave her a job).

“The bad news for her critics is that quitting is not in her vocabulary, and the bad news for Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy is that they now have a workaholic terrier of a politician biting at their heels,” wrote Rayner, marvelling at how “she is standing up reading a briefing paper when I arrive, wearing an elegant grey knee-length dress with a round-neck collar”.

“Advancing the cause of conservatism is undoubtedly her life’s purpose – it is not something she will one day retire from, as it is both her job and her pastime,” he went on, adding that “she would, no doubt, get on famously with Donald Trump”.

And asked what the Tories needed to do to stem the loss of support to Reform, Rayner wrote how “Dame Priti responds like a lioness protecting her young”. Get a room already!