Nothing about the wilfully conventional postwar home in southeast London suggests it belongs to the cabinet minister in charge of solving the housing crisis. There are no police standing guard and no reporters seeking his daily opinions on Brexit, and it will not win any architectural awards. Instead, James Brokenshire opens his front door — clean-cut, uncontroversial, ironed-jeans neat — politely offering water and ambling off to the kitchen to fetch a glass.

Brokenshire with his wife, Cathy FRANCESCO GUIDICINI

He is that rarest of Conservatives, a senior figure in Theresa May’s party who hasn’t been stalking the TV cameras on College Green or putting themselves forward for the leadership. And he must be the only MP who, amid the Brexit bedlam, appears not to have aged: a fact he puts down