OPINION - Long hours, fancy clothes and no annoying constituents: is David Cameron doing a good job as foreign secretary?

He left Downing Street to the sound of music, bowing out after six years as prime minister while caught on mic humming a nothing-in-particular melody. The harshest critics said this would sum up David Cameron’s career — leading Britain into the all-consuming abyss of Brexit and then swanning off to a charmed life in Chipping Norton. When he resigned as prime minister and shortly thereafter as an MP, he was just 49 and set for a comfortable retirement: lucrative memoirs, paid speeches and some suspect lobbying for the now bankrupt firm Greensill Capital.

But now, of course, he is back serving as Foreign Secretary in the Government of , who has been in politics for about as long as Cameron has been out of it (a credit, yes, to Sunak’s rapid rise, but also a reminder of his inexperience). Word is that, when Sunak propositioned Cameron, he likened the role to becoming the ‘prime minister abroad’. The reasoning was that he already had too much work to do at home, never mind keeping an eye on Britain’s increasingly in conflicts around the world.