But Sunak too wished to show the world he is not as other men, and in particular that today’s controversies occurred when Johnson was PM.
Should conservative parties pursue liberal-minded centrist support or compete against far-Right populists for working-class voters?
Two children watching the exchanges from the gallery did not get bored, so in that respect the pantomime had been a success.
The PM demonstrated his capacity for counter-attack, and neither Starmer nor Flynn managed to disconcert him.
But it is hard to see how he can become leader again in this Parliament, in which so many of his own MPs refused to serve under him.
Under Blair, the party rejected its own traditions and signed up instead to the global, liberal economic order.
The European Parliament is not a Parliament at all. Clarity never arrives. All is opaque, an endless subterranean wrestling match, for the irrelevant voters intolerably dull.
The unions were small-c conservatives. They paraded under heraldic banners, had no truck with such new-fangled ideas as women’s rights, and wanted to keep every coal mine in the country open.
Kruger had to courage to propose that Britain leave the ECHR and draft a new framework for refugees and human rights.
She was not an easy person to contradict and no one in her circle made the argument against unfunded tax cuts.
The former Health Secretary, and newfound star of reality TV, seems oblivious to the air of bogusness which hangs over so many of his claims.
Flynn, the new SNP leader, has more brio than Blackford and could soon outshine Starmer.
Blackford attacked the Labour leader for “desperately trying to out-Brexit the Prime Minister”. Can it be that Labour is doing better in Scotland and the Nats are starting to feel worried?