As the runners and riders jockey for position in the as yet undeclared race to lead the Tory Party, one contender could already be nosing ahead

The grim brutality of Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka will have had a particular resonance for Jeremy Hunt. This is not just because of his official responsibilities as the British foreign secretary, nor even because he is a committed – if unshowy – Christian, but because he has made the protection of Christians from persecution an article of his own particular political faith.

Hours before the attacks, Hunt had himself written a leader page piece in the Mail on Sunday warning of the dangers faced by Christian congregations the world over. “In too many parts of the world, it’s the Christian congregation that perishes”, ran the eerily anticipatory headline on his polemic. Before it had reached the breakfast table, however, the foreign secretary had posted a tweet expressing his horror at the barbaric attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, and the especial wickedness of targeting Christians at prayer on a holy feast day.

The sentiments were heartfelt. Hunt is a compassionate and sincere man. He is also his own man and, while I could be wrong and he had an unusually empathetic adviser on the case, I would hazard a guess that he wrote much of the Sunday newspaper article himself. It had a more authentic ring than most of the journalism that appears in print under the names of serving Cabinet ministers.

It is therefore not intended in any way to decry Hunt’s sincerity to suggest that the precise timing of the piece was not an accident. That is not just because it was Easter Day, but because it also happened to appear in the blink of two days after an eight-page profile of the foreign secretary had appeared in the New Statesman, the result of a three-month collaboration with that magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jason Cowley.