The meteoric rise of Claire Coutinho – but will she crash and burn?

The new energy and net zero secretary once cooked on TV for Nigella Lawson, but she might find there are too many cooks in her kitchen when it comes to climate change, which is fast replacing Brexit as the Tory hot potato issue, writes Andrew Grice

Coutinho will not be batting on an easy wicket (PA Wire)

Moderate Conservative MPs welcomed the promotion of Claire Coutinho to the cabinet in Rishi Sunak’s very mini-reshuffle.

They regard the new energy and net zero secretary as “one of us”, pointing to her membership of the Conservative Environment Network (CEN) before she was a minister. But I suspect liberal Tories are clutching at straws.

Coutinho is thankfully not a net zero sceptic but, as a former special adviser and parliamentary aide to Sunak, is schooled in Treasury thinking, which includes an unhealthy scepticism about spending money on combating climate change.