When Jeremy Hunt took over from Boris Johnson at the Foreign Office this summer, the mandarins managed a smile. “There’s a grown-up in charge again,” one civil servant said as the new foreign secretary walked up the grand staircase. While Mr Johnson is a disruptor intent on causing a stir, Mr Hunt is a diplomat giving speeches around the world in fluent Mandarin and Japanese. His only verbal slip so far has been to call his wife, Lucia Guo, Japanese when she is Chinese, but the conventional conciliator immediately sent her flowers. “I never needed to be forgiven, she’s got a fantastic sense of humour,” he tells us.
Unlike his predecessor Mr Hunt conscientiously “actually reads his red boxes”, says the civil servant. “He got his first at Oxford by doing his homework.” Although he has his detractors after six years as health secretary made him the longest-serving in British history, he is seen as a safe pair of hands when he tours the globe selling Brexit as a late convert who voted Remain. Many party moderates now see him as a better potential leader than the flamboyant, unpredictable Mr Johnson.
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