Freedom, as the song has it, is “just another word for nothing left to lose”. So, with most voters having long since made up their minds (and millions of postal ballots already cast), was last night’s bravura debate performance a belated glimpse of the sort of prime minister Rishi Sunak might have been? It will certainly aid the revisionists who wish to try to see his tenure in another light. But there is a world of difference between delivering a good debate performance, which Sunak did last night, and a programme for government.

Sunak has always seemed to me a better speaker than some give him credit for. In person, at the London hustings against Liz Truss during the 2022 Conservative leadership contest, he struck me as genuinely impressive at the town hall format (and not just because of his opponent, who was so wooden one suspects the sorcerer’s apprentice had enchanted a mop as a stand-in).

But he didn’t live up to it, and that same problem dogs him now. In last night’s leadership debate, Sunak........

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