Current mood: With my friends like this, who needs enemies?

Have you heard the one where 0.2% of the population decide who the next Prime Minister is going to be? In the words of Bimini Bon Boulash: ‘Not a joke, just a fact’.

So, yes, the next Tory leadership (AKA next PM) race is underway and – quelle surprise! If we can still say that in Brexit Britain – the gloves are off. But if they were on, what would they be: couture opera gloves or bulk-buy rubber gloves? Predictably, what politicians wear – and how much what they are wearing costs – is back in the spotlight. In this case: Rishi Sunak in a £3500 bespoke suit, and Liz Truss in a pair of £4.50 Claire’s Accessories earrings.

Arch Boris Johnson loyalist, superlative sneerer and keen Twitter user Nadine Dorries has weighed in – tweeting the OOTD details nobody asked for. Her point, I suppose, was to illustrate how mega-rich Sunak is out of touch but Truss (who she is backing) is just One of the People. It is unusual to see the price tag of a man’s outfit highlighted – they usually slip beneath the radar while women get hauled across the coals (see Theresa May’s £995 leather trousers).

Nevertheless, I don’t think it was a relevant point (and at least he has the basic decency to at least try and look the part, which is more than could be said for Johnson). Besides, there will have been absolutely nothing accidental about Truss’s choice of earrings. In this sense, they fulfilled their purpose: to widen the gulf between the contenders. Because although I want to tell you that clothes don’t matter – and in this instance, they are a distraction from small things like, oh, I don’t know, economic policy – but of course they do. Not just for MPs, but for all of us. The way we all dress is motivated by more quotidian politics (maybe not politics politics, but office politics! Sexual politics! Social politics!). What we wear both integrates and separates us. It’s a flash of what we stand for; the ultimate spin opportunity. A bespoke suit does that; high street earrings do that. We’re all doing it (even you, Nadine) whether we like to admit to it or not.

Laura