Rishi Sunak today boasted his biggest weakness is being too “perfect” and “across the detail” - while sitting in front of a sign that mis-spelt the word “campaign”.
The ex-Chancellor made the embarrassing gaffe as he was asked about his failings in the the first public hustings of the Tory leadership campaign.
Normally slick Mr Sunak replied: “Most people know I probably have a reputation for working hard.
“I think you've got to make sure that in these jobs… that you don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.”
He added he was “working at getting that balance right between ‘across the detail’ and understanding every aspect of something, and then realising I know as much or I've done as much as I need to on that, and my time is better spent elsewhere.”
While a poster behind him proclaimed “scan me to join the campiaign”, he added: “That's something I'm always working on.”
His closest rival Penny Mordaunt said her biggest weakness was her FOUR Burmese cats.
“Introducing them into No10 might present some challenges with Larry,” she admitted.
She then added she’d had to learn to “delegate to become more effective”, after rivals spread smears she was a lazy minister.
Third-placed Liz Truss said she had “sometimes been excessively over-enthusiastic”, after her early-career speech about pork markets and cheese imports went viral.
Kemi Badenoch told the ConservativeHome hustings her weakness was “allowing my sense of humour to look like I'm flippant about issues”, while Tom Tugendhat joked: "I may talk about the Army a little bit too much".
It came as Ms Truss splurged tens of billions of pounds worth of tax cuts in an online hustings lasting just over an hour.
She vowed to axe next year’s £16billion-a-year planned corporation tax hike from 19 to 25% on many company profits.
And she committed to a temporary moratorium on the green levy on household energy bills, costing around £5 billion per year but saving households about £153 each.
The Foreign Secretary did not explain fully how she would pay for such drastic moves.
Mr Sunak said he would only enact tax cuts when inflation is under control.
"The most impressing economic challenge we are facing is inflation - inflation is the enemy that makes everybody poorer and it must be the Government's priority to get a grip of it," he said.
"I'm not going to do anything that puts that at risk, so I will deliver tax cuts but I will do so responsibly after we've got a grip of inflation."
Penny Mordaunt also made few commitments on tax because "this contest is not the right place to do it".
"I'm not going to set out plans for corporation tax or any other of those taxes until we have a proper fiscal event," the trade minister said.
She said she was looking at raising tax thresholds - currently frozen - in line with inflation and will have discussions around the standing charge on electricity bills.
Critics fear the Tory candidates will enact further austerity and the shrinking of the state to pay for their tax cuts.
After 12 years of Tory government in which she has been a minister, Ms Mordaunt admitted: “Many of our public services are in a desperate state, particularly because of the pandemic.
‘We have a huge catch up job to do. So we have to recognise that we need to modernise Whitehall to do that.”
Fifth-placed Tom Tugendhat also moaned Labour wanted to build too many rented homes - despite Tory governments watering down social housing affordability rules over the years.
He said: “A Labour solution would concrete over the whole country, leave us with socialist homes that are owned by the state and we can rent on a temporary basis.
“That's not what we want.”
Meanwhile Kemi Badenoch said when she was chair of candidates for the Conservative Party “I threw my husband off the list” because “it wouldn’t look good”.
