OPINION - I’ve known Jeremy Hunt for decades — he stood out for steady determination

To understand Jeremy Hunt’s position as a chancellor who now leads the country in all but name, let me take you to a dusty hot track in the north of Thailand in the late Eighties. Hunt and I were university contemporaries and he inhabited a world of more stellar young Tory figures, including Boris Johnson and David Cameron. My college friend and I were hiking slowly across stony uphill ground, moaning about the heat and dehydration.