A WAVE of teenage fanclubby enthusiasm for Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart tells us little about the International Development Secretary, but more about the journalists doodling hearts around his name in their notebooks.

Which is a shame, because Stewart does show us a particular face of the British Establishment: he is roaming Britain like a colonial administrator, asking to meet the tribal chiefs so he can iron out the kinks of his occupation.

For all the pundits chatter about Stewart, they are talking loud – and with love – but saying nothing. ITV’s politics editor Robert Peston gushed that Stewart “electrified” his audience with “lyrical” speeches and was a “proper star.” The Times’s David Aaronovitch bizarrely claimed that “it is so obvious the UK needs a party/alliance” containing Rory Stewart alongside the Lib Dems’ Jo Swinson and Labour’s Keir Starmer. LBC’s James O’Brien claimed “Rory Stewart would absolutely annihilate Jeremy Corbyn in a general election.”