Penny Mordaunt’s entry into the Tory leadership race was widely predicted and she has now become the first to throw her hat into the bin fire. I’m totally impartial in this contest. I think any Tory MP would be just as hopeless as the next. But there’s a point worth underscoring: if Mordaunt were to win, she would be the third liberal in a row to lead the Conservative party.

Now, when I say ‘liberal’, I mean liberal in a Tory context. Boris Johnson, the long-time social liberal, immigration liberal and, until 2016, pro-EU liberal, convinced the right to hoist him as its standard bearer when the time came to replace Theresa May. He won and proceeded to largely dodge the culture wars, oversee a marked increase in both legal and illegal immigration, and cut a deal that favoured Brussels’ interests over those of the UK in Northern Ireland.

Then his party dropped him, much to the chagrin of right-wingers who, having been kicked in the face by Boris, were furious to be deprived of the prime ministerial loafer. So they chose their next champion: Liz Truss, an economic and social liberal whose priorities were removing the cap on bankers’ bonuses and allowing even more immigration than her predecessor. All this bodes well for Penny Mordaunt, who is hoping to make it a hat-trick of Tory leaders at odds with the views of a membership that nonetheless insists on voting for them.

In the last Tory leadership election, several minutes ago, I noted Mordaunt’s previous strong advocacy for trans self-identification and how she had repudiated those opinions at the outset of her leadership bid. We’ve probably all held political views that seemed eminently reasonable at the time but which we now regard as faintly mad. Some of us actually voted to make Ed Miliband prime minister. But Mordaunt’s conversion wasn’t so much Damascene as delusional. Overnight she went from one of the most reliable Tory allies of the trans self-identification movement to claiming she had ‘challenged the trans orthodoxy’. She was Nikolai Yezhov except she was the one airbrushing herself out of the photograph.

I don’t agree with Penny Mordaunt, or rather the old Penny Mordaunt, on the trans issue; though to be honest I’m not so sure on the new Mordaunt either. I can respect people who believe in gender identity theory, especially those who do it from within a party where it is not a popular view. What I struggle to respect is the cynicism that allows you to stand as a minister at the despatch box and say ‘trans men are men and trans women are women’ and then distance yourself from your erstwhile allies at the first whiff of power. It’s not as if Mordaunt’s views evolved over time, either. Her Commons recitation of the gender identity mantra was just last year.

Like I say, I don’t believe in self-identification. I want trans people to be safe; to be accorded the same rights as everyone else; to be protected from violence and discrimination; to receive much timelier access to gender-related healthcare; and generally to live their lives on their own terms. I want them to be treated with respect, compassion and love. I just can’t bring myself to pretend that biological sex doesn’t exist, or is irrelevant, or can be overcome by assertion. Nonetheless, it leaves a bitter taste to see people embraced or pushed away depending on the political expediencies of the moment, especially a group often said to be particularly vulnerable. It also makes me wonder what other people or causes could fall victim to Mordaunt’s ruthlessness.

When she stood last time, a number of right-wing commentators objected that she wasn’t a Tory at all. Having read her book, Greater: Britain After the Storm, UnHerd’s Will Lloyd concluded that she ‘tacks to the centre but ends up on the managerial left’. As they have already shown, Tory members are willing to overlook a bit of social liberalism but the perception of centre-left inclinations might be less welcome. Or maybe it would be to her advantage. The polls say the country wants a Labour prime minister. Penny Mordaunt could be the Tories’ opportunity to give them one.